Jocko Podcast - 285: STRATEGY. How the Long Way Around is The Shortest Distance Between Two Points.

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:11:50 - The Indirect Approach.2:20:17 - How to stay on THE PATH2:37:50 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 285 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. All right, so we are going to dive into some work that I have been waiting to dive into it. I waited because I wanted to do it justice.

I waited because I wanted to be thorough in covering it. I waited because there's a lot of work to cover. And going into this particular book, books, series of books, articles, individual. The more I read over the years, it got better and better. And it kept getting better and kept making more sense to me from a tactical battle war perspective. from a leadership perspective, from a how-to-lead perspective, and also, contraryly, like a red-cell-type,

how not to lead, from a relationship, leadership, capital perspective, and a jihitsu perspective. So basically, I was just seeing everything in my life wrapped up in this particular, this particular individual and his work. And on top of that, so that there's another podcast that I've got waiting in the wings,

or it's going to take a series of podcasts, but it's waiting in the wings. I'm super excited to do it. But I can't do that podcast until I do this podcast, or at least this podcast, or at least a couple podcasts, on this individual, this one man, highly influential man,

a guy named B.H. Liddell Hart, Basil Henry Liddell Hart. you can probably guess if you don't know who he is. If you know military history and military strategy and military theory at all, you know who he is. If you don't know who he is, you can probably guess that he's British because he has the first name, Basil, right? Sure. I mean, it's a pretty British name. He didn't go by Basil.

I guess he went by BH, I guess. I'm guessing. That's how he writes his books. Mother's maiden name was Liddell. she was Scottish You know Born and raised I guess on the border of England The heart side the Liddell

The heart side was farmers He was Went to some really nice Private schools So he grew up in England Born in France but grew up in England He went to some really nice private schools The first one of the private schools

That he went through is called St. Paul's which is in London And it was founded in 1509 High School Founded in 1509 Okay, so that's just kind of crazy when we think about England. Then he ended up at Cambridge University, which, by the way, was founded 300 years prior to that in 1209. 1209, 1209. Well, he left Cambridge University when World War I broke out, volunteered for the British Army.

He was in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. I'm glad we did that Light Infantry podcast recently. Dave, you chimed in all. You liked that one, didn't you? I did. Made you start thinking about some light infantry. Because it's a mindset. Yeah.

It's not just a way that people are trained. It's a way of thinking. Yeah. And I got to pull that real time at muster. I listened to it all the way to muster and put it into my brief. What was that point that you made? Well, the whole point behind that, like the largest theory when you went into it was the size of the force is not the deciding factor. There's a lot of this.

If you have a smaller force doesn't guarantee your defeat. And the whole point of this was like, hey, how are we going to move, think, maneuver in a way that a smaller force that looks weak on paper and just outmaneuver these big giant forces because they're inflexible, immobile, they're dug in. So that theoretically in my mind resonated with all sorts of stuff. Can you imagine as I was learning jiu-jitsu and thinking about that actual thing, how many, how many elements started to just come into view, like come out of the fog as I'm thinking through that very thing. learning jiu-ts, I'm like, oh, if I can maneuver myself over here and put all my force against a smaller portion of their strength, I can win. All right. So he goes into the British Army. He is part of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Shout out to Yorkshire. He spent time on the Western Front, World War I, got sent back from the front two times because he was.

blown up and had concussive injuries. Cool. Hey, listen, you went to the front, you got blown up so bad that you got sent back because you had concussive injuries. Cool, you good? Okay, go back. All right. You get blown up again.

Boom. You know what? You're good? Okay, go back again. Third time he goes back. Cool. Gets back just in time for the Battle of Somme. And during the Battle of Somme, wounded three times.

Continued to fight. Finally, he gets gas. Badly enough that he can't continue fighting his battalion was just about wiped out on the first day of the offensive Battle of the Psalm this so his battalion was some of the 60,000 casualties on day one And that event and those events clearly left a mark on his mentality because you've heard me go off and talk about the I don't know if I've used the word stupidity before because it's not the right word but the the problem with World War I of hey okay we just lost a battalion at 0600 cool 0605 Dave your battalion's going okay Dave's battalion just got wiped out okay echo it's

610 your battalion go and that's what we're doing that left a mark on him eventually after he's wounded started to heal up went back trained new recruits wrote the infantry training manual after the war after so then after the war he ends up right in the infantry training manual he got married got married to a woman named jesse stone we're wondering what layers are there had a son he retired in 1927 became a journalist a military historian military theorist wrote the most wrote so much it's ridiculous so much it's just writing all the time deep historical writing analysis worked for prime minister chamberlain and he was he was kind of maneuvering and getting people to think in a different way a different way of using air power a different way of using tank power a different way of using maneuver warfare and of course we all know what happened with prime Mr. Chamberlain, he was weak.

And Churchill took over. And when Churchill took over, they kind of used the more traditional war strategy in the beginning. Guess who didn't do that? You know who didn't do that? Hitler, the Nazis, who were actually paying attention. Now, there's some question around how much influence, Liddell Hart, had over the Nazis. There's definitely some, meaning,

They were reading, you know, the line in Patton, I read your book, right? So Patton saying he read Rommel's book. Well, there's, there are actual connections between Rommel and some of the other, um, more known, more well-known and some of the lesser well-known Nazi leaders that were reading his stuff and be like, oh, this makes, this makes sense. There's also a lot of people that will say that that B.H. Liddell Hart kind of inflated that a little bit. but there was some influence. And also, regardless of how much of a connection there was,

even if there wasn't a connection, they were both thinking the same things, right? They were both taking and learn the same lessons, right? Which, that's what that happens sometimes. You know, you put somebody in one situation, they're in a vacuum from someone else. If you put them in a similar situation like World War I, there's a pretty good chance that they could come to similar conclusions.

Like maybe it's not smart just to line up and start attacking all at once. Maybe we should use some decentralized command. Maybe we should use maneuver warfare. So they all kind of came to the same conclusions, meaning B.H. Liddell Hart, meaning some of the German and Nazi leadership. And so that stuff kind of came into play. So he wrote a bunch of this stuff down. He wrote a book called The Strategy of the Indirect Approach, which was also printed as the way to win wars, which is pretty cool.

And this is kind of what kicked me into hyper drive of doing this. And we talked about this on the underground. So I did a post about the Civil War. I did a post, a social media post about the Civil War, about the Battle of Chancellorville, about Jackson taking the indirect path, going 14 miles around to the flank of the Union troops and winning the battle in an hour,

as opposed to just taking the direct assault towards the Union troops, which is a half a mile. And some of the comments in there, you know, were, of course, what do I focus on? But most of the comments were like, yeah, that makes sense. Use the indirect approach. And I talked about using it towards people and in a leadership position, how the indirect approach is normally the best way to go.

And people were like, you know, you should just tell the truth. Like, are you saying you should lie to people? So it was that whole thing. And so I, look, I know where I got these ideas from. It's no mystery to me. And part of it is the fact that, You put me in an environment and you put someone in an environment and you make them figure something out they're going to come to the same conclusions Right so some of this stuff I was thinking hmm

Man going to the flank makes a lot of sense and it makes a lot of sense from leadership But but I also know that these ideas were dripped into my head over the years. I mean when you do a basic seal assault on a target Guess what? You set up a base element that puts down covering fire and then a flanking element goes around. That's what you do This is not it's not rocket science So I know that some of my indirect, my theory, my thoughts around the indirect strategy, the indirect approach, I know some of those were just from being in the military.

But I also know that some of it came from reading heart. And so it made me crack open some of these books again and made me kind of fast forward in my mind to getting to these sooner in this podcast. Because, let's face it, When, well, the theory is based in reality, right? And that's what's interesting about this. When you have someone that spent time in the military,

because the name of this book that one of the books we're going to look at today is the strategy of indirect approach, and it's about the theory, right? But if you have someone, when you have someone that's been in war and spent time as a military leader and spent time in combat and spent time in the worst kind of combat like, the actual worst combat, the actual worst combat, Battle of the Song, like the worst combat,

actual worst combat, it's not theory anymore, right? That theory becomes based deeply in reality. And that's what we have with, with this book. And we'll be covering two of his books today,

or at least trying to cover two of them. We might make it through, I don't even know how much, because there's a lot to talk about. One is called the strategy of the indirect approach, which like I said, was also reprinted as the way to win wars. And the other one was just called strategy straight up. So I guess we're going to get to it.

Anything, Dave? I wrote down the word travesty when you were talking about World War I. I just wrote that word down just to remind me of the thing that I think about is when you talk about losing a battalion. It's a scale that I think is actually kind of hard to comprehend when to think of a battalion. I mean, we have lost. been on patrols where we lost a vehicle. I lost people in a whole vehicle. A battalion is on a scale and just sort of the willingness, the willingness to allow that to happen over and over again.

And then, in retrospect, thinking, and I was thinking of this, as you said, it was the Germans had to learn that same lesson. They had to have learned the same lesson. You know, and the Marine Corps takes a little bit of pride in sort of showing up, having the similar experience and then saying, we're not doing this anymore. The Marine Corps really takes pride in that, and we teach that history. but in actual World War I is what you're talking about. Yes, in actual World War I of showing up

sort of after the war had been underway for quite some time getting on board with how it was being done and then suffering massive casualties in the very initial engagements and saying we're done with this direct assault approach

and the larger point to that is the idea that not just for him but for Germany as well the idea that the way we did that was a travesty and that that that that you would see how those lessons apply to well beyond just warfare, that that would sink into your psyche in every single,

everything you did in your life would be informed as such a bad way to describe. Like, it's influence on a level that you wouldn't just rethink how you did war. You would rethink every aspect of your life if you suffered the casualties to that degree because of the willingness for leaders who just say, just like you described, your battalion's gone, you're up next. And the fact that it influenced every aspect of his life is actually not even remotely surprised to me. Yeah, and it boils down to it. And I know you like when I say this, Dave, it becomes not just a theory, not just a strategy, but a way of thinking.

A way of thinking is what it becomes. And what's interesting is we're about to hear exactly how that transpired in his head. And this is something we covered this. We actually covered this on the underground. But I just I had to touch on it on the underground, but we're going to go deep. So here we go. Here's the preface My original strategy my original study of the strategy of indirect approach was written in 1929 published under the title the decisive Wars of History. It has been out of print for some time. So there's another third title that this book has been published under in the following year in the years following its publication I continue to explore this line of fault and from the results of such further study

compiled a number of supplementary notes, which were privately circulated. Since the course of the present war has provided further examples of the value of the indirect approach and thereby given fresh point to the thesis, the issue of a new edition of the book provides an opportunity to include these. So now he's putting this one out in World War II. And actually, it's towards the end of World War II because Well, he ends up talking about World War II and what's happening. When in the course of studying a long series of military campaigns,

I first came to perceive the superiority of the indirect over the direct approach. I was looking merely for light upon strategy. So he starts off just looking like, okay, wait, how does this work? How can we win? Seems like this indirect thing's pretty cool. It seems like a good strategy for the battlefield. With deepening reflection, however, I began to realize that the indirect approach had a much wider application, that it was a law of life in all spheres, a truth of philosophy.

Right? A law of life in all spheres. So this is where we get crazy because there's so many people. So many people this like, oh, you got to be direct. Like that's just such a common theme in the world. Hey, you've got to be direct. You've got to be frank. You got to tell.

So, so I get it. I get it. I get it. He found that this has a much wider application. And it's a law of all, a law of life in all spheres, a truth of philosophy. Its fulfillment was seen to be the key practical achievement in dealing with any problem where the human factor predominant. dominates and a conflict of wills tends to spring from an underlying concern for interests. Okay, so here's where this gets awesome.

So he's talking about conflict, right? A conflict of wills. And what we might fail to realize is that if I'm on the same team as Dave, we can also still have a conflict of wills because Dave wants to do A and I want to do B. So even though we're on the same team, that's like one of the other perspectives that I think about this. You know, when I said about leadership capital and relationships, this applies 100% there too. In all such cases, in all such cases, so this is cases where you have the human factor. Anytime you got the human factor, in all such cases, the direct assault of new ideas

provokes a stubborn resistance, thus intensifying the difficulty of producing a change of outlook. Dave, how long have you heard, how many times have you heard me tell this to clients, to people? This is it. It's, I don't have the vocabulary to explain how often we say that in some version of that sentence

in everything, but I got to be careful because I could probably talk, just hearing it invokes so many things to think about, but he's almost articulating it like when there's a human component to this. And I'm thinking to myself, so when is that not, when in my life am I not interacting with another human being? If we're, if we're doing a computer software design, right, we don't need to worry about this. Right.

If we're, if we're actually programming a machine of some kind, we don't need to worry about it. Yeah. Other than that, other than that, if you directly assault an idea, it's going to provoke stubborn resistance. So if I impose my plan on Dave, it's going to get resistance. Even though Dave's on my team, I impose a plan on them. It's going to be resisted. And it's going to make the change of outlook harder. It's going to make the change of outlook harder.

So if my wife wants something and I attack it, it's going to be harder for her to change her mind. There's going to be more resistance for her changing her mind on where we're going out for dinner. That's what's going to happen. Back to the book. conversion is achieved more easily and rapidly by unsuspected infiltration of a different idea or by an argument that turns the flank of instinctive opposition. So you're going to get more easy, more easily and more rapidly conversion of their brain. Will come when you flank them.

Check. And faster. And faster. Rapidly and more. easily by an unsuspected infiltration of a different idea and by the way don't let well we'll get to it so so there's some people that are thinking right now oh so what you're going to do is you're going to lie to Dave no I'm not going to lie to Dave doesn't mean I lie it doesn't mean I say well actually Dave we should use my plan because and I'm going to make up some intel that supports

my plan I'm going to make up a timeline that supports my plan no that's not what I'm talking about at all back to the book in commerce the suggestion that there is a bargain to be secured is far more potent than any direct appeal to buy. And in any sphere, it is a proverbial that the surest way of gaining a superior's acceptance of a new idea is to persuade him that it is his idea. Hello. This is something, again, maybe I should just start paying,

what is it, paying royalties. I just owe royalties to be it, because leadership strategy and tactics, Oh, that's just all in there. Let us make it their idea. As in war, the aim is to weaken resistance before attempting to overcome it. And the effect is best attained by drawing the other party out of his defenses. Great.

We're not attacking hardened positions. This idea of the indirect approach is closely related to all problems of the influence of mind upon mind. All problems of the influence of mind upon mind. All problems. Anytime it's my mind against someone else's mind, this is where we need to go indirect. The most influential factor in human history. Yet it is hard to reconcile with another lesson.

That true conclusions can only be reached or approached by pursuing the truth without regard to where it may lead or what its effect may be on different interests. So what are we saying there? Now we're saying, wait a second. Wait a second. Shouldn't we be going after the truth? Like, isn't it the, look, if I'm working with Dave and I think my plan's better, well, then I need to tell him that.

That's the truth. The truth is, my plan's better. And what's so hard about this is one of those universal things that pisses me off. I got you. Is there's no one that it's against all moral high ground to lie, right? So the opposite of lying is what? Truth. Telling the truth.

So if we're starting to think that this is not telling the truth, then what are we doing? We must be lying. So how do we reconcile? That's what he's saying. How do we reconcile this? Wait, I have a different plan than Dave. I think my plan's better. I should tell him the truth.

That's what I should do. I shouldn't lie to him. Well, we're not talking about lying to him. Back to the book. History bears witness to the vital part that, the prophets have played in human progress, which is evidence of the ultimate practical value of expressing unreservedly the truth as one sees it. Okay, so now we're going to get, he's going to use the example, historical examples, and there's countless of profits. Someone that is a

prophet that stands up and says, this is the truth as I see it, and tells the truth. Yet it also becomes clear that the acceptance and spreading of their vision has always depended on another class of men. What's the other class of men? Leaders. Leaders who had to be philosophical strategists striking a compromise between truth and men's receptivity to it. So lately I've been saying a lot of what good is telling the truth if no one hears it or no one listens to you. If you, if you stab somebody in the eye with the dagger of truth, what are they going to do? They're going to be pissed. They're going to lash out at you.

They might even pull out of sidearm and shoot you in the gut. But they definitely don't want to hear anything from it. And they'll do their best to pull that thing back out and stab you with it. So you haven't made any progress at all. So that's what a prophet does. A prophet says, this is the truth. And they stab you in the eye with it. A leader has to find that compromise between telling the truth and getting people

actually listen to it. Their effect has often depended as much on their own limitations in perceiving the truth as on their practical wisdom in proclaiming it. So how are you going to tell the truth? Practical wisdom. How are you going to, what are you going to say? How are you going to say it where it'll actually be listened to? And then he goes on to say this, the prophets must be stoned. That is their lot. That is their test of their self-fulfillment. What happens the prophet the prophet gets stoned the prophet gets crucified that's what happens but a leader who is stoned may merely prove that he has failed in his function through a deficiency of wisdom or through confusing his function with that of a prophet this is pure brilliance by the way this is absolute pure

brilliance so if you're that if you're in a leadership position and what you do is you start stabbing people with the dagger of truth in the neck and you think you're doing a good thing. Guess what? They're going to tackle you and they're going to stone you to death. They're going to execute you because you were stabbing people and it offended them and it hurt them and that you didn't convince anybody of anything. So sometimes you get a leader that's like, look, the truth is, listen Dave, I'm going to tell you the truth here.

That's not good. It's not going to help you. It's crazy you're like on page one. I know. Page one. half. Yeah. I think the,

the phrase that's been coming to mind a lot lately when you talk about this is, is a truth that it's imposed upon somebody compared to the truth that they discover for themselves, the difference between those two. And I'm thinking of all the, like the phrases that people use when they're going to reveal the truth. Let me stop you right there. Actually,

and when you hear people prepping for the direct assault, which is I'm now going to let you know. And even the preparation for that, just that phrase alone puts the other person in a position where all they want to do is defend themselves. And the words that come next almost don't even matter because if I say actually Jock, the reality is. The reality is. The first thing you do is you mentally, you are dug in no matter how truthful I'm going to be after that. It's just the connection that he's making, though, like how universal that is to all interactions is just. It's crazy listening to this and then the application to every interaction you have.

Like with any human being and how instinctive it is to, I guess, tell the truth and how ineffective that way of thinking is. If there's an outcome that you're trying to shape. Echo Charles. Have you ever seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark? Yes, sir. Okay. So there's an arc, right? The Ark of the Covenant.

And I think the truth is kind of like that. If you reveal that truth in an improper way, people's faces are melting. Melting off. Oh, yeah. That's what happens. Yeah. So people treat the truth as if it's only benevolent, as if it can only do good. Yeah.

But you got to remember there's collateral. That truth causes collateral damage and people don't pay attention to that. So when you start pulling off the lid, maybe you got to like, you got to, like, you got prep people for it you got to say hey turn your eyes for a second here there's going to be some bright lights if you don't prep them for and what what we want to do what we want to do is we want them to reveal the truth to themselves that's what we really want a really good leader look a prophet will show you the truth maybe you're getting melted a really good leader you somehow discover the truth that mean they showed it to you but you don't even know it so the whole

expression the truth hurts you know that that's because that's kind of common right true so would that be an indicator of maybe a profit or or at the profit is not the correct that's profit all day long profit is like look look echo truth hurts but I'm gonna tell you something you know what I mean how how how so how open-minded are you when I get done with that statement oh I would meet it with stubborn resistance check and you know we like to think that well you know I really have a good relationship with so you know great there might be person in your entire life that you can be like, hey dude, that was jacked up and you're like, cool, got it.

What adjustments are anything? There's one person in your life you can do that with. Maybe. Isn't that at the end of the day, in a way, the indirect approach anyway? Because, you know, you say, okay, that one person. Yeah, but, you know, why is that one person? Because you have this years and years and years and years and years of this indirect, you know, kind of approach or whatever. And then, yeah, so you open up that little hole that, yeah, you have that direct line all day.

Now. Yeah, now. Exactly. Yes. You are correct. Even that approach because if you would have met that person day one three years ago and said you know I was looking at the video you made I'm not feeling it actually you know the camera angles that you use kind of marginal right Five years of working with you before I could be like bruh

The soundtrack? No actually you put a Christmas song in there. It was actually right away Yeah, I did it. You're right Back to the book Time alone can tell whether the effect of such a Sacrifice redeems the apparent failure as a leader that does honor to him as a man. So there's a chance that you could you could present something in over time. People go, yeah, he was right. At the least, he avoids the more common fault of leaders, that of sacrificing the truth to expediency without ultimate advantage to the cause.

So occasionally a leader is like, you know what? We just need to tell the truth. And you sacrifice it. It gets killed. It gets thrown away. And one of the books that I'm or the podcast that I want to move to from this one, which I will get to and I'm not 100% sure when, but they got all these examples of problems in the military and military thinking. And one of the problems, and I forget the exact number, but there's been like 20 major advancements in naval warfare in the last 500 years. And every one of them was met with absolutely stiff resistance.

No, not everyone. 17 of them were met with stiff resistance by all senior naval leaders in the world. You know, they started making ships from steel instead of what a bunch of like this is griot. You can't repair steel. We can't get a welder out. They resisted. Switching to the steam engine, switching to gas,

or diesel, switching to like all the, people resisted every one of these things, every one of them. Well, sorry, 17 out of 20. of great advancements. It happens all the time because somebody goes hard with the truth and people defend. They go in instant defense mode.

So like, remember the movie Independence? No, no, no. Armageddon. I don't think I ever actually saw it, but. It's too bad. It's a good flick. I'm sure it's, wasn't that up for several Oscars? Anyway, Armageddon, Bruce Willis. Oh, yeah. Asteroid coming in.

Right? What was the plan that won out? Do you watch Armaged again at Deep Burke? Sorry, dude. Bro. Independence day, I was dialed in, man. It's all good. We're just culturally lost too.

I'm apologizing. It's okay. I'll explain to you. Asteroid coming in, right? World ending asteroid, global killer. So they're like, hey, let's just blast it with nukes and blow it right out of the sky. Then the smart scientist is like, that's a bad idea. Everyone gets all mad, right?

No, that's it. We're going to need a direct approach. Launch nukes, right? Can't get any more direct than that. But the smart scientist said, nope, is what you're going to do. You're going to go in there. You're going to drill a little hole. You're going to put a nuke in that hole.

You're going to just nudge it just a little bit from the side. So now the trajectory gets changed. You see what I'm saying? That was the smarter approach. Same thing. Yeah, exactly right. Here I am going through historical books trying to figure this stuff out. And I could have figured out with Armageddon.

Armageddon. With Bruce Willis. Yeah, you don't got to bother with all this. Check. Back to the book. We good? Yes. Armageddon?

Yeah. I'm just saying these ideas are everywhere. You see what I'm saying? There we go, man. For whoever habitually suppresses the truth. So this is where you have to pay attention because, again, it's not me lying to Dave and saying, well, actually, Dave, the timeline that's required for the plan. We better use my plan. Whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interest of tact will produce a, you will produce a,

deformity from the womb of his thought so you can't you can't lie about what you're saying you have to maintain you have to maintain the truth but you have to take an indirect approach that's it it's not a lie it's an indirect approach bound to the truth he explains it a little bit more is there a practical way of combining progress towards the attainment of truth with progress towards its acceptance. So is there a way to get Dave to think about my plan and utilize my plan with also doing it in a way that he is open to accept this idea?

Is there a combination of those two things? Of telling Dave the truth about what I think of his plan and at the same time getting him to accept my opinion. That's what we want, right? A possible solution of the problem is suggested by reflection on strategic principles. which point to the importance of maintaining an object consistently and also of pursuing it in a way adapted to the circumstances. This seems so obvious is that we continue to focus on the right thing, but then we continue to move towards this objective, but as circumstances change, we adjust, we maneuver. We say, oh, yeah, there's a massive enemy location right here.

Let's not continue in that direction. Let's go around it. Isn't it smart to do that with our ideas as well? It doesn't mean we abandon the objective. It doesn't mean we say, oh, we're going to change this objective or we're not going to continue towards it. It means we adjust our approach. And maybe instead of going direct, we go indirect. Opposition to the truth is inevitable.

That's a good thing to remember. Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea. but the degree of resistance can be diminished by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack in a long established position. Instead, seek to turn it by a flank movement so that the more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of the truth. But in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth, for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into the untruth. So for the people that commented when I talked about the indirect approach and we're like, oh, so you're just going to lie to your people? No. No, we're not

going to lie to our people. The truth is the objective, but we are going to adjust our approach so that we're not offensive to the individuals or the groups that we're talking to so that we don't cause them to put up a more stiff resistance to fight against our idea to, to, to, to, to, for them to look at it as if it's not the truth. We're going to flank. That's what we're going to do. And then he goes on here. And he says, the meaning of these reflections may be made clearer

by illustration from one's own experience. Looking back on the stages by which various fresh ideas gained acceptance, it can be seen that the process was eased when they could be presented, not as something radically new, but as the revival in modern terms of a time-honored principle or practice that had been forgotten. So here's one of his little indirect approaches

is to take a new idea and camouflage it with an old idea. It's kind of like what the Christians did with the Vikings, right? Easter. You know the term Easter? Sure. And yeah, it's a pagan thing. But we call it's a pagan word.

And it's a pagan ceremony. But the Christians are like, oh, yeah, you can call the thing in the spring. We'll call that Easter. It's cool. It's about Christ rising, but, you know, we call it Easter. It's sort of a thing that you guys already do. They just kind of take an old idea and rebrand it. That's actually what they did.

Yeah. I think they did that with Christmas too. Did that with Christmas too. So that's what we're doing. We're kind of camouflaging this idea, so it's a little more open to it. Hey, you know how you guys do the springtime thing? and you guys celebrate birth, right? We had, you know, like a rebirth.

Kind of co-brand that thing. We're good. It's kind of like your dog, right? When you feed them the heart pills, right? Heartworm pills. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put a little piece of steak around that thing.

Yeah, you know, like you've been eating this food this whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just put the heartworm pills in there. He goes on to say here, this required not deception, but care to trace the connection, since there is nothing new on the sun, right? you can always figure out something that ties into what you're doing. A notable example was the way that the opposition to mechanization was diminished by showing that the mobile armored vehicle, the fast-moving tank, was fundamentally the air of the armored horseman. And thus the natural means of reviving the decisive role which cavalry played in past ages, which is what we call, what do we call armored cavalry now?

Why is that? Because people resist this tank, it's going to get stuck, it takes gas. I mean, a horse can go forever. You can eat off the land. How are you going to refuel these tanks? People just resist that idea. And then it's like, oh, no, no. This is the new cavalry.

Oh, okay. Kind of cool. Then we're down. So what can you do as you try and convince people of ideas? Take an old idea. Repackage it. And it's true because there's no new ideas under the sun. It's not like you're lying to them.

I don't know, obviously, what's coming in terms of, you know, how much detail is in and what we're going to discuss. but even just the word, the truth, how that's the, it's the topic that you're trying to get across. Yes. And even what that means, like, if I have an idea, that's different than me, like, trying to get you to understand some sort of, like, hey, two plus two is four.

And you're going to say, no, okay, as opposed to, I think we should do this. And the abandonment of that truth versus, all right, listen, I can't just walk up to Jock and go, hey, this is the new way we're going to do is solve this problem. And even just the word truth has a connotation like I'm right and you're wrong as opposed to, hey, I'm trying to get you to see this a different way. And it might not end up exactly how I've drawn it out. Maybe my drawing is like ends up in 80% or whatever.

But I can see people getting hung up the idea that I have to convince Jocko of the truth, meaning I know the answer. And he doesn't. And if he doesn't, then I've got to figure out how to, and maybe the fast way to judge it, just shove it in his face and go, dude, this is what we're doing, as opposed to getting him to see that there might be another way of doing it, which is actually the truth, as opposed to it has to be exactly my way. And if there's a minefield between you and me, I guess I could go into that minefield, but it's not going to help me get you to see something different. And he, I think,

said the quote is, resistance to the truth is inevitable. Yes. Resistance to your ideas are inevitable. So let's not pretend like you might be able to avoid that resistance. That minefield, that barrier, that wall, it is there. I just think the idea of the truth of us committing to, it is this way as opposed to, I want to think of something a different way. Yeah. No, that's a great point because what we're really, when we start talking about it in a leadership capacity, it becomes, hey, it's my idea.

Yeah. And as we were talking on EF online today, it's like, my assumption is that my idea is flawed. Right. And I can present my idea to you, but I still present it as if not it's the truth, but it's an idea of a possibility. Now, what's interesting is what does that do to my idea? It makes it indirect. Totally. It makes it indirect.

Me packaging the idea that I have as a possibility or as a thought or an idea for me, as a to this is the way we should do it. It makes it an indirect approach. And what we talked about today on EF Online, I actually believe that. So I don't have to act. I don't have to pretend like, hey, I'm going to pretend like this isn't the best idea ever. And like Dave should just shut up and do it my way. I'm going to pretend that.

So that way it's a little more indirect. No, I actually think, you know what? This is my idea seems like a good idea, but there could be some holes punt into it, which is fine. I'm okay with that. So yeah, when we start talking about. getting people's ideas and anytime you I mean there's very few things that I Actually here's something I've said early podcasts is the amount of times that I say Dave bro listen

This is what we should do. Yeah The only reason I'm gonna say that is if I am a 100% 100% convicted that I and it and it's and You probably have never even heard me say that because it's so rare now look there was times where in the seal team somebody wanted to do something that was bad Oh you want to you want to set up on two sides of a road and ambush someone in the middle Okay, so that means we're going to be shooting at each other like this is bad we do not want to do that Of course how often did guys present a plan to me like that? Almost never so most of the time it was you know hey think through that but very rarely

very rarely do I have the approach that I actually know the capital T truth. Right. So this is a very good point to make. You, whoever you are, you don't know the truth. Very seldom are you 100% convinced, hey, my idea is the truth. Don't walk around with that attitude. It's not good. We're getting into this next section here, which is called history as practical experience.

Starts off by saying fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others' experience. This famous saying quoted by Bismarck, but by no means original to him has peculiar bearing on military questions. Ford has often been remarked that the soldier, unlike followers of other professions, has but rare opportunities to practice his profession. Isn't that interesting? Look, you're in the military?

Cool. You're a professional soldier? Awesome. How often do you actually get to do that job? The answer is not as often as a normal, not as often as a carpenter, not as often as a plumber, not as often as a software engineer. You might get to train for it, but how often are you locked and loaded and in combat with someone else in the military?

Back to the book. Indeed, it might even be argued that in a literal sense, the profession of arms is not a profession at all, but merely casual employment. And paradoxically, that it ceased to be a profession when the soldier of fortune gave way to the When mercenary troops who were employed and paid for the purpose of war were replaced by standing armies Which continued to be paid when there was no war So if you're a mercenary you'd be like oh there's a war over there cool I'm gonna go do it That's kind of like a plumber. Oh, there's a different war over here cool I'm gonna go to that one

Oh, there's a different war over here cool That's a little bit more of an actual profession you might end up in more combat in your life than if you're in a standing army That's doing that job even when there's no war going on This logical if somewhat extreme argument recalls the excuse often made in the past for paying officers a rate inadequate to live on and by some of those officers for doing an inadequate day's work. The contention being that the officers pay was not a working salary, but a retainer paid to him for the benefit of having his services available in case of war. This reminds me of some of the information about the British Army and how just the officers

during certain phases were just actual aristocrats that had all. Almost no interest in fighting wars and almost complete interest in going to the country club. Some of the biographies of some of the guys that led the Boer War were pretty embarrassing. And then they showed up for the Boer War with pianos and just, it's like crazy. If the argument that strictly there is no profession of arms will not hold good in most armies today, on the score of work, it is inevitably strengthened on the score of practice by the increasing infrequency of wars. So there's less and less wars now.

Are we then left with the conclusion that armies are doomed to become more and more amateurish in the popular bad sense of that much abused and misused words? So, hey, look, if you're in the military, you're not getting to fight all the time. Does that mean you become an amateur over time? For obviously, even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical and experience and you know what I like it. Well, the reason I wasn't going to do this section. But guess what? It's the same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership. You're in a leadership position. How often are you actually in a challenging situation in leadership?

How often does someone say, hey boss, I'm not doing this? How often does someone say that I'm not working with that person? Like you end up with combative situations. But how often is that? Because normally people are, hey, yeah, yeah, got it, boss. Oh, that sounds like a good point. Like that's what you're normally getting. You're not normally as a leader. Hopefully you're not normally being combative. So it's the same thing. How do we train for that? Bismarck throws a different and more encouraging light on the problem. It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect. And that of the two, indirect practical experience may be more valuable because it's infinitely wider. So look, you can get that experience of dealing with a bad

employee, but how often do you actually deal with it? I mean, how many Marines did you have to write up? Yeah. Hardly any ever. I mean, like how many seals did I have to write up? How many seals did I have to fire? When we're working with companies, we work with companies with thousands of employees. The combative situations are much more rare than the day to day, hey, this is what we're doing, normal leadership. Yeah, and how often is the problem? even as bad as you think it is. You know, when we'll get questions about, hey, how do I deal with a boss who, you know,

wants my team to fail? When I say, hey, if you really think about the problem, they're not, they're often not as bad or as significant and not of the magnitude that we even make it out to be. Right. Even in the most active career, especially a soldier's career, the scope and possibilities of direct experience are extremely limited.

In contrast to the military, the medical profession has incestant practice, right? They're doing a surgery a day. Two surgeries day, three surgeries day. Yet the great achievements in medicine and surgery have usually been due to the research, worker, and not to the general practitioner. Direct experience is inherently too limited a form, to form a secure foundation for either theory or application. So if the only combat experience you're going to get is combat experience, you're going to be, you're going to be screwed. At the best, it produces an atmosphere, which is value in drying and hardening the structure of our thought.

Ooh, if you only have a little bit of combat experience, that's what you become if you don't open your mind up. If you only have a little bit of leadership experience, that's what happens when you get in the SEAL teams. You know, we'd have the on-the-job training leadership. That's how guys would become, that's how they'd get their leadership trainings just by watching their platoon chief or their platoon commander.

So if they weren't good, that bad example would dry and harden in their mind and become the way they would be too because they didn't open their mind up to different indirect, experience. The greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent, right? History is universal, experience, the experience, not of another, but of many others under

manifold conditions. Boom. So we can learn about leadership from everywhere. Here we have the rational justification for military history. It's preponderant practical value in the training. and mental development of a soldier. But the benefit depends, as with all experience, on its breadth, on how closely it approaches the definition quoted above

and on the method of studying it. So we got to study. And look, the whole premise of this particular podcast is understanding human nature, is understanding leadership by understanding how people act in war. Why is that? Why don't we study a bunch of business cases? Well, because if you,

you want to see human nature be revealed, you got to put some pressure on it. You got to put some pressure. There's no better pressure. No better pressure than combat. Soldiers universally concede the general truth of Napoleon's much quoted dictum that in war, the moral is to the physical as three to one. Cool. We covered that on this podcast and all of Napoleon's maxims.

But here we go. The actual arithmetic. Proportion may be worthless for morale is apt to decline if weapons be inadequate and the strongest will is a vet little use inside of a dead body But although the moral and physical factors are inseparable and indivisible the same gains its immortal value because it expresses the idea of the predominance the The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions So obviously it's not like okay. Here's the numerical you have this much you have this much physical situation? Oh, don't worry, morale is three to one. That's not what we're talking about, but it's that idea. On them constantly turns the issue of war in battle, and in history of war, they form the more

constant factors changing only in degree, whereas physical factors are fundamentally different in almost every war in every military situation. That's the important part of this. That's the important part of this. You've got the physical factors, right? The physical, but that changes. But what doesn't change? The history of war, they form more constant factors, changing only in degree. The physical factors go all over the place. Because we got machine guns, we got tanks, we got people with night vision.

Like there's different physical things, but the human nature doesn't change. This realization affects the whole question of the study of military history for practical use. The method in the last few generations, the method in the last few generations, has been to select one or two campaigns and to study them exhaustively as means of developing both our minds and a theory of war. But the continual changes in military means from war to war entail a grave danger, even a certainty that our outlook will be narrow and lessens fallacious.

In the physical sphere, the one constant factor is that means and condition are invariably inconsistent. So the physical stuff, we can study it like, okay, how did you maneuver in this situation? How did you, what weapons did you use over here? Well, guess what? You fast forward 30 years and we got different weapons. You fast forward six years and we go from no night vision to all night vision. So if that's what we're studying, what are we looking at?

In contrast, human nature varies but slightly in its reaction to danger. Some men by race, by environment, or by training may be less sensitive than others, but the difference is one of degree, not fundamental. So people are people. The more localized the situation and our study, the more disconcerting and less calculable is such a difference of degree. It may prevent an exact calculation of the resistance which men will offer in any situation, but it is not impair the judgment that they will offer less if taken by surprise than if they are on alert. This is like, so it doesn't matter where you look in history. The person that's surprised versus the person that's on alert, you're going to get the same, almost the exact same reaction. Less if they are weary and hungry than if they are fresh and well fed.

Look, we go back 1,000 years, 2,000 years. Well fed troops that are well rested are ready to rock and roll. Weary, hungry, they're not. The broader, the psychological survey, the better foundation it affords for today. So you have to look throughout history and see all these different battles and see what the psychology of the soldiers and leaders was the predominance of the psychological over the physical and its greater consistency Point to the conclusion that the foundation of any theory of war should be as broad as possible An intensive study of one campaign unless based upon unless based on extensive knowledge of the whole history of war is as likely to lead us to lead us

into pitfalls as on to the peaks of military achievement so if you just look at one campaign and that's where you base everything on you're wrong but if a certain effect is seen to follow a certain cause in a score or more cases in different epochs and diverse conditions there is ground for regarding this cause as an integral part of any theory of war you see something one time it doesn't mean jack if you see something four times but it's all in the same campaign in the same locale and the same soldiers fighting against the same other soldiers again it's a minimal but when you take it over centuries or millennia and you see the same thing over and over again maybe you should pay attention to

that one the thesis set force in this book is the product of such an extensive examination it might indeed be termed the compound effect of certain causes these being connected with my task of military editor for encyclopedia or britannica that's kind of crazy for while i had previously delved into various periods of military history according to my inclination this task compelled a general survey of all often against my inclination so he was the military editor

for the encyclopedia Britannica you know what that is echo Charles of course yes I'm just saying you are you a millennial no I'm not jaco thank you some people I bet a kid right now does not know what the encyclopedia Britannica was when we were kids that was kind of

it right that was Google. That was Google. Yep, that was Google. Got to go find the letter on the spine. Yeah, on that spine, boom, pull it out. There you go. And there are some letters that were like two and one, like Q and R.

All right, cool. We're good with that book, with that volume. So this guy was the military editor. And even though previously he would just kind of study what he wanted to study, but then all of a sudden he had to go back and study all these other things. And he starts seeing all these continual similarities. through everything he's seeing. And here we go.

He says, and a survey or even a tourist, if you will, has at least a wide perspective and can at least take in the general lie of the land where the minor knows only his scene. So if you study one war, one battle, and that's what you just go deep in that scene, hey, you know a lot about that one scene, but the guy that's up at altitude surveying all the land, he's got the whole lay of the land.

during this survey one impression grew ever stronger that throughout the ages throughout the ages decisive results in war have only been reached when the approach has been indirect in strategy the longest way round is apt to be the shortest way home more and more clearly has the fact emerged that a direct approach to one's mental object or physical physical objective and he uses this term a lot as you're gonna hear me read he just calls something the object we always call it the objective and he actually goes into like why that's not a good word so a lot of times you'll hear him say object more and more clearly has the fact emerged that a direct approach to one's mental

object or physical objective along the line of natural expectation for the opponent has ever tended to and usually produce negative results if you take that path that's kind of expected, chances are we're not going to, we're not going to, it's not going to work out well. The reason it's been expressed vividly in Napoleon's dictum that the moral is to the physical is three to one. It may be expressed scientifically by saying that while the strength of an enemy country lies outwardly in its numbers and resources, these are equally dependent upon stability or equilibrium of control, morale, and supply. To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent's equilibrium and by stiffening it augments his resisting power.

I think that comment, the one you made just a minute ago, that quote, the longest way around is the shortest way home. I think that's the piece that for whatever reason I think we see is the most hard to accept that. And I think my point is probably better served by saying the opposite is also true. the shortest way around is the longest way home. There's this belief like, if I just get to the point, I will get to the end faster. And the opposite is true. And just the willingness to recognize the more indirect I am, the longer this journey is to get this other person to see the truth, the faster this is going to be. And that's such a hard thing I think for people to embrace for exactly what you just said is, is the more you see me taking this direct path towards you, the more.

more the more dug in you will become because you see it coming. And what I'm doing is so much less important than how I am doing it that you won't hear anything as I'm saying, any of the ideas that I'm offering or any of the truth that I'm delivering and it will take me longer. And the, we hear, I'm a direct person. I have to tell the truth. That's just how I am. The recognition that that is the longest, the longest way.

and sometimes you'll never get there. Yep. Yeah, the way I often explain this to clients is, I usually just preemptively say, I know what you're all thinking. Y'all are thinking is that doesn't sound very efficient. It'd be much more efficient for me just to say, Dave, this is how we're doing it.

Be way more efficient to do that. And it's just, like you said, it's just so hard to realize that that's the longest way home. That's the longest way home. The line I just read, to move along the line of natural expectation, that's the shortest route, consolidates the opponent's equilibrium. So when you are going where they expect you to go,

that's where they put their defenses. That's what happens. That's why in jujitsu, you have to mess with their balance. You have to come from a different angle. And by stiffening it augments its resisting power, by the way. Because when you know where I'm coming at you from, you are ready to fight and you know what to do to fight. In war, as in wrestling.

The attempt to throw the opponent without loosening his foothold imbalance can only result in self-exhaustion, increasing in disproportionate ratio to the effective strain put upon him. Victory by such a method can only be possible through an immense margin of superior strength in some form and even so tends to lose decisiveness. So if we're wrestling, which let's face it, we're wrestling, if what we do is attempt a takedown with no setup or attempt a submission with no setup, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Like we're training with Kerry today. Carrie's a white belt, right?

Guess what? He's a white belt been training for a year. If you grab his arm, you're not going to get it. You're not going to get it. You have to do something else. You have to set him up. Even a white belt and jujitsu in contrast an examination of military history not of one period But of its whole course brings out the point that in almost all the decisive campaigns the dislocation of the enemy psychological and physical balance has been the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his overthrow

Dislocation he uses that word a lot dislocation putting people off balance getting getting getting getting that getting in their head not letting them well I guess it's the true opposite it's the opposite of consolidation of equilibrium right like here I am I'm stable oh dislocated now I'm not where I'm not where I want to be this dislocation has been produced by a strategic indirect approach intentional or fortuitous so sometimes people just accidentally end up off balancing somebody cool it may take varied forms as our analysis reveals for the strategy of the indirect approach is inclusive of, but wider than the maneuver sur la derrier, which is French, which I'm

even going to try, but it means maneuver behind someone, which General Kamen's researches showed as being the constant aim and key method of Napoleon in his conduct of operations. While Kamen was concerned primarily with the logistical moves, the factors of time, space, and communications, this analysis seeks to probe deeper into psychological. foundations and in doing so finds an underlying relationship between many strategical operations which have no outward resemblance to a maneuver against the enemy's rear yet are none less definitely vital examples of the strategy of the indirect approach so sometimes it doesn't look like what you're doing is

an indirect maneuver but it is to trace this relationship and determine the character of operations is not necessary And is indeed irrelevant to tabulate the numerical strengths and detail the details of supply and transport. Our concern is simply with historical effects in a comprehensive series of cases and with the logistical or psychological moves which led up to them. If similar effects follow fundamentally similar moves in conditions which vary widely in scale, nature, and date, there's clearly an underlying connection from which we can logically deduce a common cause. And the more widely the conditions vary, the firmer this conduction, this deduction. And what he's saying there is, look, when you take a bunch of examples over time throughout history, it becomes really clear that this isn't just a fluke.

This is the reality of the situation. And that's so, so here's what we're going to do. This guy is a historian, right? And the next giant chunk of these books is he goes historical. What was that book we were reading late where people went statistical? Oh, yeah, that's right. It was one of those World War II things. Somebody went statistical.

The officer went statistical on me. He started telling me about how long officers were living. He's like, the average officers live in about four and a half hours up there. Good luck. He went statistical on me. What B.H. Liddell Hart does is he goes historical. And he goes from the 5th century to the 20th century. He goes from the Greek wars, the Roman wars, the Byzantine wars, the medieval wars, the 17th Central, the 18th century, the French Revolution, Napoleon.

He gets to the First World War, the Second World War, and he goes through just detailed battles and talks about the indirect approach. And what we're going to do is we're actually going to bypass those. And there's a couple reasons why. Number one, get the books. Get the books. Number two, this is what we do all the time on this podcast. This is actually what we do all the time on this podcast. We talk about Napoleon.

We talk about his pushing to Russia. We talk about World War I. We talk about World War I. We talk about Vietnam. We talk about Korea. And we've seen and pointed out the indirect strategy all the time. All the time. That's what we do.

How do I usually talk about it? The flank, right? We talked about maneuver war. This is what this is about. This is what this whole podcast is about is these historical lessons. And B.H. Liddell Hart, he serves them up for us in this book. So if you want to get those, and who knows, maybe one day we'll jump into these. But if you want to jump into them, get the book.

Get the book strategy by B.H. Liddell Hart. You can get in depth on these things. But what I want to do is I want to kind of jump into them. want to kind of jump ahead to his book strategy where he goes into the theory of strategy. And he starts off by saying having drawn our conclusions from analysis, oh, by the way, the analysis that he's talking about that he draws conclusion from is like 315 pages. This is no, this is when he's talking about, oh, you need to study all these different errors. He does it and points out the indirect approach and how it wins every single time.

Even if it was by accident, it's what makes us win. He says, having drawn our conclusions from analysis of history, it seems advantageous to construct on the fresh foundation of a new dwelling house for the strategic thought. So he's looked at all these things that have happened and we got to kind of get, we kind of got to hit the reset button. He says, let us first be clear on what is strategy. Klaus Witz, in his monumental work on war, defined it as the art of, of the employment of battles as a means to gain the object of war. In other words, strategy comes, strategy forms the plan of war, maps out the proposed course of the different campaigns,

which compose the war and regulates the battles to be fought in each. Now, this is probably since episode seven of this podcast. People have been like, hey, you can do Clausewitz? You can do Clausewitz on war? Hey, you're going to do on war? And there's a couple reasons why I haven't done it yet, and I'm sure we will, and I owe it. to military history to do it.

But there's a couple reasons. One reason it's like kind of the, it's such a popular one that's like, hey, you know what, that's right out there. Is it really the first one I wanna hit? I'd rather hit some other strategical ideas. I mean, I guess I did do Sun Tzu on war,

so this is not, this is warranted excuse, maybe. I've always known that Klauswitz, or I always felt that Klauswitz, you know, respect, respect Klauswitz. We're giving him respect. Um, by the way, here's why this Croswitz is no just, hey, military theorist, right? This is the guy that sat in the ivory tower and thought about war. Uh, he entered the military at age 12 as a Lance corporal.

You know what I'm saying? Like this is no joke. Uh, fought in the Ryan campaigns, fought in the Napoleonic wars, went to the military academy at Berlin, worked, worked for Charnhorst, who I've talked about a bunch on this podcast, because when it comes from maneuver warfare, he's kind of that guy in the beginning that lost with the Prussian army to Napoleon at the Battle of Jenna. And when he did, he looked around and said,

what the hell just happened? And realized there was some decentralized, some indirect warfare going on and started kind of making that. Well, Klauswitz kind of was under his wing. And then when the Prussians made an alliance with Napoleon, Klaus Witz was like, no. And he joined the Imperial Russian army.

And then when they broke up that alliance, he went back to the Prussian army. It was the chief of staff of three corps and just battles, Napoleonic battles. At the Battle of Waterloo, he was in that campaign. He was preventing some of Napoleon's reinforcements and showing up, which obviously caused the problem. Went back was an instructor and then the director of the military academy at Berlin.

And by the way, this whole time he's writing down what his thoughts are. And then he ended up dying of cholera before he had these, before he was able to complete his works. And really before you might say, and Liddell Hart kind of makes the assumption that he was kind of heading in a different direction. So he's respectful but critical of Kosswitz. That's kind of, that's, I don't want to say that's the way I've always felt. I kind of have always felt that way a little bit. I don't know. Maybe that's because I'm a little bit of a contrarian.

But maybe more than that, Klaus Witt says things that I go, really? Really? And by the way, the Klaus Witt's mentality is kind of what brought us to World War I. And that mentality of mass, which is one of his premier,

premier principles is like hey we're gonna get I have more people than you I'm gonna win which as we know when we compare that to the the the principles behind light infantry it's not what we're looking for there's also a connection in there too even between what was talking about earlier between the physical and the moral of these physical attributes and you know they vary from campaign a campaign, which is part of the reason why you don't want to overreact to the lessons, the physical lessons of a particular campaign, because even as simple as like desert warfare versus jungle warfare, those lessons, fording rivers, those are physical lessons.

And it's not that they're invaluable, but the physical principles of mass or those components are less important. Now, one without the other, you have to have them both, but I was even just sitting here thinking of when Tom Fife was here, who's talking about World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Not from a historical standpoint, but from actually a participant standpoint. But the lessons he was talking about, he didn't spend a bunch of time. When World War II, we were dealing with this physical environment. It was the universal nature of his lessons were take care of your people.

I mean, how many books have I listened to on this podcast read that the fundamental principle of leadership in success and battle was taking care of your people. I'm looking at about faces as I'm looking at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. And he probably has a whole bunch of physical lessons. And it's not to say that those aren't important, but those are never the ones that the leaders really, when they're talking about the lessons they learn and that moral component, I'm just using moral to use the same language. It's the human nature piece like you were talking about and how much more important that is.

And I remember even in getting a master's degree was, was Klauswitz was sort of central to the strategic studies. And there's a physical focus on that. And the principal of mass is a great example. And listen, I would love to go to war with an advantage in mass every time. That'd be awesome. But we know that that's not the deciding factor. We know that.

Interestingly, as you pointed to About Face, there's one book. that we haven't covered on this podcast by Colonel David Hackworth, which you would think would be just like prime. It's called Vietnam, Vietnam Primer. And Vietnam Primer is a book to get you ready to go to Vietnam. And it literally shows like, hey, here's how far out you should put your claim more. It's, it's just, we could cover it.

I'm sure we could get some lessons from it, but compared to about face, not even close. Here's the other thing that's interesting, is that cover move, right? cover and move the first law of combat leadership if you're in the jungle you better cover and move if you're in the desert you better cover and move if you're doing a river crossing you better cover and move if you're doing an assault you better cover and move if you're in an airplane if you're in an airplane at 38,000 feet AC kicking yeah you better cover and move so that's I think

What was weird for me was as like cover, move and that's another thing. Cover and move. Cover and move. Movement. You win by maneuver. You don't win by sitting still. And when you start talking about Klauswitz and mass,

it's like we are here. Yeah. So that's, again, I'm not trying to, dude, I'm not trying to like get crazy and talk smack about Klaus Fitz, like I said, if you were a Lance Corporal at age 12, I salute you, and I will listen to what the hell you have to say 100%. But I will not, I will question anybody. I question Hackworth.

Read my opening. Like, hey, man, guy was not perfect. I mean, you use him as the prime example of a lesson we teach in business all the time is if you lose your influence, and probably the most influential figure in your life as a leader is still your prime example of what not to do in a particular situation.

So I think the contrarian component of it is important. Look, Clauswoods is awesome. On war is awesome. There's a bunch of good stuff in there too. For sure. And I know that you're saying that, but just to link it back to that conversation and the human nature component

and thinking about the direct approach and thinking of human nature, if you just thought before you took the direct approach of anything, how would I react to somebody doing that to me? 99% of the direct assault would go away. If you could just take that perspective on it. Unless you lie to yourself.

Seriously. Like unless you lie to yourself, which many, many people will do, which is, man, I just want Dave just to come out. Hey, if I'm wrong, just come and tell me. Yeah. Like, if you lie to yourself, then you probably just keep taking the director.

approach all the time. Yeah. Which is not going to work out good for you. And if you're the person that prides themselves in listening to other people's direct assault on you, there's high risk to that you are lying to yourself. Check. All right. Back to the book.

One defect of this definition, that was the definition of strategy, which was the art of employment of battles as means to gain the object of war. So that's Clauswitz's definition. One defect of this definition is that it intrudes on the sphere of policy or the higher conduct of war, which must necessarily be the responsibility of government and not of military leaders. It employs as its agents in the executive control of operations. So he's going to go through this, but there's, you know, you know what we say all the time, you get to think strategic all the time. That's what he's about to address 14 different ways. and he's going to actually go into a chapter.

I don't know if we'll get there today, but there's a higher level strategy called grand strategy. And so he's thinking grand strategy, policy. Another defect is that it narrows the meaning of strategy to the pure utilization of battle, thus conveying the idea that battle is the only means to the strategical end. It was an easy step for Klauswitz's less profound disciples to confuse the means with the,

end and to reach the conclusion that in war in every in war every other consideration should be subordinated to the aim of fighting a decisive battle so so think about that that's your attitude is like hey the whole purpose of strategy is to is to engage in decisive battle that's what we're doing so then what do you do doing world war one you put more people on the line and you put more people on the line and you put more people in line you send another battalion another brigade another division over the top that's what you do And there's people that lead like this in companies, in organizations, in their families. And the way they lead is by trying to win battles.

That's the way they lead. And the commitment that every argument is a decisive battle that has to be won. And not being able to recognize where, and I think, I think he called them like inflection points or something along the lines of the recognition of this is where a, this is, this is. this is decisive and being able to recognize what an inflection point is in combat as opposed to like every every engagement is not an inflection point is not a decisive point and being able to recognize where those points are and and fighting those as opposed to every single engagement you mean the idea of picking your battles hey pick your battles oh who's been told that before yeah hey pick your battles comments seems like such common sense and yet all the time people

Look at every discussion argument contention as the decisive battle for their ego Yeah Relation of policy to break down the distinction between strategy and policy would not matter much if the two functions were normally combined in the same person as with Frederick or Napoleon But as such autocratic soldier rulers have been rare in modern times and became temporarily extinct for the 19th century The effect was insidiously harmful for it encouraged soldiers to make preposterous claim that policy should be subservient to their conduct of operations. And especially in democratic countries, it drew statesmen on to overstep the definite border of his sphere and interfere with his military employees and the actual use of their tools.

So there's got to be a line between these two things. And we got to stay in our lanes a little bit. Hey, here's the policy. How do you want to execute it? Hey, here's the resources I need. Oh, no, change your policy. Moki reached a clearer and wiser definition in terming, strategy, quote, the practical adaptation of the means placed at a general's disposal to the

attainment of the object in view. Mokke's another Prussian guy, chief general in the 1860s, and he's the guy that kind of, I would say, he had the idea of making sure you have an overall objective and making sure that people understand what the overall objective is, the German word. Alftrogstockic overall objective. This definition fixes the responsibility of a military commander to the government by which he is employed. His responsibility is that of applying most profitably to the interest of higher war policy, the force allotted to him within the theater of operations assigned to him. If he considers that the force allotted is inadequate for the task indicated,

he is justified in putting this out. And if his opinion is overruled, he can refuse or resign the command. But he exceeds his rightful sphere if he attempts to dictate to the government what measure of force should be placed at his disposal. So like I said, there's a line here that he's talking about. On the other hand, the government, which formulates war policy and has to adapt to it to conditions which often change as a war progresses, can rightly intervene in the strategy of a campaign not merely by replacing a commander in whom it has lost confidence, but by modifying his object according to the needs of its war policy. While it should not interfere with him in handling of his tools, it should indicate clearly the nature of his task. Thus, strategy has not necessarily the simple object of seeking to overthrow the enemy's military power. When a government appreciates that the enemy has the military superiority, either in general or in a particular theater, it may be wise to enjoin a strategy of limited aim.

Before I get into limited aim, let's tie this back to corporate leadership and business leadership. What are you doing if you're in charge to make sure that you are empowering your subordinate leaders to make things happen? And not saying, hey, here's exactly how I want you to do it. Here's what I want you to do with your team. Here's what I want you to do with your tools. That's when you're crossing the line. You shouldn't have to do that. You shouldn't have to have those conversations.

We should be able to say, hey, Dave, this is what we're trying to make. happen, how do you want to do it? And Dave, who's on the front line, says, hey, boss, here's what I'm thinking. Looks good. Go execute. And by the way, Dave might come back to me and say, hey, boss, we can't do that unless you give me some more resources. And I say, hey, it's all we got.

Sorry. And you say, we need to cut back then. Or we need to not do this market area because we don't have the, we don't have the resources we need. Okay, cool. Or maybe I say, well, I think it's just because you suck. You're fired. Echo.

You got the con. Yeah. So let's make sure that we delineate the roles and responsibilities clearly enough that we know what we're trying to do up and down the chain of command. Now to get back to this point of a strategy of limited aim. He goes into it a little bit here. This is the strategy of limited aim. It may desire to wait until the balance of force can be changed by the intervention of allies or by the transfer of forces from another theater. It may desire to wait or even limit its military effort permanently while economic or naval action decides the issues.

It may calculate that the overthrow of the enemy's military power is a task definitely beyond its capacity and not worth the effort. And that the object of its war policy can be assured by seizing territory which it can either retain or use as a bargaining counter when peace is negotiated. So right, every one of those things is indirect. It's a it's a it's a it's a limited aim. It's like oh, you know what I wanted to kick Dave's ass But he's way bigger and way better at Jiu jitsu than I thought he was so you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna like say hey man instead of what us fighting Why don't I buy you a hamburger and we'll talk about some stuff and what you know what I'm saying like it's a different it's just taking a different approach it's a totally different approach You know what I think Dave can actually kick my ass

Echo is gonna be here in about 30 minutes Echo's bigger and stronger than Dave he's been training more Jiu-Jitsu I'm gonna wait till hey hey Dave you might if you might if we wait I'd rather have you roll with echo right so I'm bringing in some reinforcements That's the strategy of limited limit limit aim such a policy has more support from history than military opinion Has recognized and is less inherently a policy of weakness than some apologies and policies and So just because I say, you know what, Dave, I'm not really looking at a roll with you. I'm going to wait until Echo gets here. That's not necessarily weak.

In fact, it might be smarter. In fact, if I think you can beat me and I'm pretty sure you're going to beat me, it's way smarter for me to wait till Echo shows up to kick your ass. It is indeed bound up with the history of the British Empire and repeatedly proved a life buoy to Britain's allies as well as of the permanent benefit to herself. However unconsciously followed, there's ground for inquiry whether this conservative military policy does not deserve to be accorded a place in the theory of the conduct of war. So how often did Britain go, you know what? Maybe we don't want to fight that war.

Maybe we want to give that up. Maybe we want to give that area up. Maybe we need to bargain and move into an area that we know we can take. And then we'll negotiate for it back later. The more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change. in the balance of force wait until echo shows up a change often sought and achieved by draining the enemy's force weakening him by pricks instead of risking blows what if while you know what hey dave i don't you know i don't really want to roll today echo's going to be here in a little while but

while you're waiting why don't you roll a couple rounds with carry and then want you roll a couple rounds with dean and then so here you are fighting all these battles by the time echo charles shows up fresh he's just had a discipline go he's ready to rock and roll you're tired you're nine rounds deep That's my that's my that's my that's a great plan great plan so I Weakened you by pricks instead of risking blows the essential condition of strategy such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionate Greater than on oneself because I was sitting over on the corner keeping time That's what I was doing while you were rolling with guy after guy after guy I'm keeping track of time for you The object may be sought by rating his supplies by local attacks which annihilate or inflict disproportionate portion at loss on parts of his

force by lowering him into unprofitable attacks, by causing an excessively wide distribution of his force, and no least, by exhausting his moral and physical energy. This is like the exact example, right? I don't think I can kick your ass, but you know what? Echo's going to be here in a little while. And in the meantime, I'm going to entice, I'm going to go, hey, hey, Dean, go get a couple rounds. Go, go get a couple rounds with Dave.

Boom. And just rough you up and going to hit you with a couple different people. By the time Echo shows up, no factor. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. And I'm also thinking of just the idea of even going to war with the American military. And most of our opponents, certainly more recent history, the aim wasn't to destroy the American military. It was to make those series of little pricks over time become intolerable where we are no longer willing to have these little successive losses.

So we're not going to have that decisive campaign at all because you made this intolerable for me and that connection to politics. policy too we talk about that all the time of you know the will you know somebody's will to be doing that is hey I don't want to keep doing this over and over again these small little things these little those things add up over time as opposed to like somehow the objective is we're going to have a force on force you know culminating event between some military and the american military which which again generically speaking nobody wants that nobody wants to have a decisive engagement with the american military so we're going to do some other things instead and make that intolerable for us, which by the way, we suck in many areas of this.

The United States in general, think of the propaganda damage that gets done to us on a regular basis that has been done to us on a regular basis, basically since Vietnam. Anytime we get into a conflict now, the propaganda that is used to turn us against ourselves in this country is, it's crazy how effective it is. you look at the Vietnam War it's crazy how effective they were at turning Americans against Americans in that war

back to the book this closer definition sheds light on the question previously raised of a general's independence in carrying out his own strategy inside his theater of operations for if the government has decided upon a limited aim or grand strategy

the general who even within his strategic fear seeks to overthrow the enemy's military power may do more harm than good to the government's war policy so what is that saying that saying like i got dave out there he's super aggressive and he's like you know what i'm going to i'm going to take this whole area and meanwhile i'm thinking dave don't take that whole area then we're going to have to occupy it and i don't have the people to occupy it and now we're going to cause more problems so just because you're winning doesn't mean you're winning usually a war of limited aim a war policy of limited aim imposes a strategy of limited aim And a decisive aim should only be adopted with the approval of the government, which alone can decide whether it is worth the candle.

Old school expression. I didn't really know what it meant. I had to look it up. Worth the candle means we're going to do something is what we're doing worth the candle that the light it's going to take for us to be able to do whatever we're doing. Yeah. Is it worth the candle? Like we're going to, oh, we got some work to do tonight? Cool, light the candle.

But how much are we really going to get done? It's not worth the candle. This is back in the day. Kind of like, is the juice worth the squeeze? We can now arrive at a shorter definition of strategy as, quote, the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy, end quote. For strategy is concerned not merely with the movement of forces as its role is often defined, but with the effect. when the application of the military instrument merges into actual fighting the dispositions for and control of such direct action are termed tactics. The two categories, although convenient for discussion, can never be truly divided into separate compartments because each not only influences but merges into the other, which is why leadership strategy and tactics is called leadership strategy and tactics.

Kind of convenient that it worked out that way. But listen, here's what's important is what we're doing. It doesn't matter. What matters is how it ends up. What matters is the strategic effect. That's why we have to think strategic all the time. That's what we need to do. Next section, higher or grand strategy.

As tactics in, as tactics is an application of strategy on a lower plane, so strategy is an application on a lower plane of grand strategy. So he goes to one level. level up. A whole other thing. We got tactical. We got operational. He doesn't really talk about operational. That must be a modern thing. Tactical, operational, strategic, and then grand strategy. While practically synonymous with policy, what was your, would you study in college? Policy. Dang. What's up, man? You want to chime in a little bit? I do. Let us know. You're rolling, man. But I mean, there's so much Claus-Wizzian stuff in there. But the previous comment, it was, as I'm thinking of sort of, like,

Like the business alignment of this military concept is how often are we engaged in tactical battles that don't promote or support the strategic goal? And I think it was, I think it was the DeBree podcast, but you said this is if what you were doing, if the tactical engagement you're in supports the big picture strategy, it's not tactical. It's strategic. And if it doesn't, it's tactical and you're engaged, you shouldn't be doing it. Like, how often do we dig in on these small things that even in the end, if we win, don't reinforce the big picture goal, the objective. And how often do I, with my team, the marketing team, dig in on how I want to do this thing and I'm going to fight with the sales team over resources and supplies and equipment and priority

that don't actually help the company. The company achieved some sort of success. And being able to look at that as a leader and going, hey, hey, listen, this doesn't matter. We don't need to dig in here. Let them have this. We're playing the longer game here because what we want is the company to win. And how hard it is for us to decouple this idea that every battle is a strategic. No, it's not.

It's not. Very few of them actually. Yeah. Absolutely. For the role of grand strategy, higher strategy. is to coordinate and direct all the resources of a nation or band of nations towards the attainment of a political object of the war,

the goal defined by fundamental policy. Grand strategies should both calculate and develop to economic resources and manpower of nations in order to sustain fighting services, also the moral resources. For to foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess more concrete forms of power.

which is why you need to pay attention to what's going on in your country when it comes to propaganda that's being used against you. Grand Strategy, too, should regulate the distribution of power between the several services and between the services and industry. Moreover, fighting power is but one of the instruments of Grand Strategy, which should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure, diplomatic pressure, commercial pressure, and least of ethical pressure to weaken the opponent's will. A good cause is a sword as well as armor.

Likewise, chivalry in war can be a most effective weapon in weakening the opponent's will to resist as well as augmenting moral strength. This is why we always say, take the high ground of the high ground. Take you. Take the high ground. Take the high ground. Good cause is a sword as well as armor.

And when you give up the high ground, when you get down into the mud, and I think there's a quote you references, when you get down in the mud, you're not getting muddy because somebody's throwing mud at you. It's because you went down there and how hard it is once you've got up the high ground

to get back up onto the high ground once you give that up. Back to the book. Furthermore, while the horizon of strategy is bounded by the war, Grand Strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace. It should not only combine the various instruments, but so regulate their use as to avoid damage to the future state of peace for its security and prosperity.

The sorry state of peace for both sides that has followed most wars can be traced to the fact that unlike strategy, the realm of grand strategy is, for the most part, terra incognita. Still awaiting exploration and understanding. that means unknown territory. So this is, this is, you know, beyond thinking strategic.

And it's kind of the way we term thinking strategic, you know, if you and I have a relationship and I'm going to bark and order at you, where does that get me? Even if you do that thing, where does it put us in the future? How's our relationship? If we have a client and we decide, you know what, we're going to bill them anyways, even though they didn't, you know, they didn't participate, but we're going to bill them anyways.

How's that going to work out for us? Cool. We get a little bit more money. now how does that how does that affect us in a year when that client needs help so the grand strategy looks beyond the ward a subsequent piece how often are we doing that looking further in the future goes into pure or military strategy having cleared the ground we can build up our conception of strategy on its proper plane and original basis that of the art of the general strategy depends for success first and formal

First and foremost, first and most on a sound calculation and coordination of the ends and means, of the end and means. The end must be proportioned to the total means and the means used in gaining each intermediate end, which contributes to the ultimate must be proportioned to the value and the needs of that intermediate end, whether it be to gain an objective or fulfill a contributory purpose. And excess may be as harmful as a deficiency. So that's, first of all, that's a freaking run on sentence. But second of all, but second of all, it's important because what he's saying is you should constantly be assessing if the juices worth the squeeze.

You should constantly be saying like, listen, we're going to put this much effort towards this client or we're going to put this much effort towards this relationship. We're going to put this much effort towards this team who's we don't know how they're going to do. So you constantly have to check yourself if the end that you're going towards is your investment worth it. What's the ROI? And by the way, spending too much, it can be as bad as not spending enough. Totally. And spending much to to win a particular battle or win a particular war, but you spent so much So you look around and go, well, that was not, the juice wasn't worth to squeeze. Wasn't worth the candle.

Yeah, what do we accomplish? And that next level up to grand strategy. And of course, I think the connection he's making is on this large scale. I literally took a class called American Grand Strategy. Check. And the military is a component of all these other things. You named a bunch of them, diplomatic, you know, economic. There's a whole bunch of different tools that are inside there that are actually, you know, they're all connected.

but the military is one arm of that, one of many. Of course, you're in uniform, you think the whole world revolves around military power. We know, we say it all the time, we know that's not true. But an example that you use all the time in just trying to explain this idea of utilizing resources and making decisions. When you talk about means, our means, everybody has limited means. We don't have unlimited means or unlimited resources. And if I'm looking at this particular area, I want to open up a shop here, open up a couple of locations in this physical. physical, you know, this geographic area to compete with our competitors.

And I take all of my resources, every penny I've got, every tool that I've got, and I get in there. Go bigger, go home. That's right. And in the end, we get in there. We get in that region. And I don't know, it doesn't quite work out. Or even if it does, but we now have no other tools and resources to do anything else. The larger piece of that is the strategy isn't to get into that area.

The strategy is actually to make our company stronger. and that limited understanding or that understanding being limited of, hey, we're here to take over this region. If that is not connected to the company being successful, that larger piece of it, all the means or all the resources to getting into that area, they don't help you. It's a waste. You burn that candle. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what's interesting is from a leadership, this is a total, this is a leadership capital discussion, right?

It's, hey, is it worth me expending this leadership capital? on getting Dave to follow my order, on getting Dave to, you know, pick up a client that I know is going to be painful and I'm forcing him to do it and whatever, whatever the case may be. Is it worth that leadership capital? We have to weigh that out. And you know, when you were talking about, oh, we got the diplomatic, we got the commercial pressure, the financial pressure, the ethical pressure, all those things. And the military is part of that. Guess what? From a leadership perspective, The military thing is, hey, this is my rank, I outrank you, and we're just going to go by force. That's force. That should be, there's six, seven, eight, twelve other components that I can utilize as a leader to make something happen. And the worst one to use, the one that cost me the most leadership capital is the military one, which is my rank, which is, hey, I'm the boss. You listen to me. To compel someone through the threat of force as your only tool to get them to comply, the threat of force.

And even, you know, the moral high ground. I mean, how convenient would it be if you and I were in a situation looking at something? And mine was the moral approach and yours was the immoral approach, which requires no money, no time, no resources, no equipment to go, oh, you know what? Hey, listen, if we do this, if we take the, if we take the unethical and we get found out and somebody just goes, oh, hey man, you're right. No, listen, man, I was, you're right. We need to do just, we just need to do the right thing here. The strategic win from that alone, or the opposite end of the spectrum, the military end is.

I come, through force and demand and through risk of destruction is how I'm getting you to behave in a way that helps the team. Yeah. I've got this quote later on, and I don't even remember where I got the quote from, but I talked about on this podcast,

or maybe I talked about an EF online. It's something along the lines of, cool, you win, and now you're in charge of a waste. Land. Great. Oh, yeah, you won the war. Cool.

Now you have burnt, scorched earth. That's what you have. Cool. Good job. What did you win? Nothing. Yeah. Back to the book.

A true, oh, this is a true adjustment would establish a perfect economy of force in the deeper sense of that off distorted military term. So all the time we heard the term, you know, economy of force. But because of the nature and uncertainty of war, and uncertainty increased by lack of scientific study, even the greatest military ability could not achieve a true adjustment and success lies in the closest approximation to the truth. Again, his use of the word truth is a little bit broad,

but what he's talking about is like, how much should I apply to this? How much force should I apply? We want to apply the minimum force required, but we're not going to be perfect with that. So we want to get as close as we can. This relativity is inherent because, however, knowledge and of the science of war be extended. It will depend on the art for its application.

Art can not only bring the end nearer to the means, but by giving a higher value to the means, enable the end to be extended. This complicates calculation because no man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will. So there's all these things that we have to, account for as leaders.

And we're not going to get it perfectly right. But how close can we get it? Next section. Elements and conditions. In strategy, however, calculation is simpler and a closer approximation to truth possible than in tactics. So this is a very interesting point. It's easier to calculate big, broad, strategic things because you're a little bit further

away from the human component. for in war the chief incalculable is the human will which manifests itself in resistance which in turn lies in the province of tactic strategy has not to overcome resistance except from nature its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance and it seeks to fulfill this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise now that's cool and everything i would say that there's definitely that's a stretch because we've seen collect the collective will of a people change the outcome of strategic situations for sure. So even though I said, hey, it's closer to, it still can have a huge impact. I mean, look at Vietnam. It was like, oh, well, we can beat them because we can kill 150 Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong soldiers for every one of our people that killed. So we'll win.

No, actually, we won't win. Right. Because guess what? their collective will is freaking incredibly strong. Yeah. But movement and surprise. Movement lies in the physical sphere and depends on calculation of the conditions of the time, topography, and transport capacity.

By transport capacity is meant both the means by which and the measure in which force can be moved and maintained. Okay. So there's the physical sphere, sphere of movement. Surprise lies in the psychological sphere and depends on. on a calculation far more difficult than in the physical sphere of the manifold conditions varying in each case which are likely to affect the will of the opponent. So you've got two things. You've got movement and you've got surprise.

This is how we're going to kind of win. This is how we're going to win by movement and surprise. Movement, physical, surprise, psychological. Although strategy may aim more at exploiting movement than at exploiting surprise or conversely the two elements react on each other. So even though they're different spheres, they're still closely woven together. Movement generates surprise and surprise gives impetus to movement. So this is jiu jitzy, right? If you surprise somebody, they have to react to it. So you can make someone move by surprising them with something. For a movement which is accelerated or changes its

direction inevitably carries with it a degree of surprise, even though it be concealed while surprise, smooths the path of movement by hindering the enemy's countermeasures and counter movements. So if I surprise you, you don't have time to react to it. You're not defending it. This obviously not something this guy was thinking about when I think about flying in stealth airplanes. The psychology of that is what I have discovered, and it's true, not just an airplane, it's true in every situation. More often than not, people's reaction to being surprised is not the right reaction. They don't usually react well.

Even when they react, it's still like an overreaction, underreaction. Think about how you react to it when you're surprised. Are those usually like good, smooth, effective responses? 100%. Yeah, all the time. And when you look at stealth airplanes, the advent of Americans showing up with stealth airplanes. And sort of the culminating event really was in Desert Storm when nobody even knew we had them.

And all of a sudden, stealth airplanes are over Baghdad dropping bombs. and the Iraqis didn't under they did not understand what was happening and the reaction was obviously wrong now you know that they're proliferated that's why a significantly undersized force when you're flying around in a stealth aircraft and then I'm fighting against you and your conventional aircraft and the first call you hear is hey the first four of your airplanes are all dead and and the psychological response to that is almost always the wrong response the reaction They behave erratically. They move in different direction.

They don't know what to do. The psychological response to surprise is almost always the wrong reaction. And the power of creating that reaction in your opponents is really hard to overstate. And that's really one of the things that stealth airplanes have allowed us to do is get our opponents to behave incorrectly to give us an even more of an advantage. You're going to off balance them somehow. Yeah. Because what you just said when you say they either overreact or unreact, guess what? you're off balance, right?

A balanced measured response would be like, okay, we didn't really get them off balance, but you either overreact or you underreact and through surprise, you cause them to move too far in one direction, too far in the other direction, that's what's going to happen and that's what we're going to take advantage of.

And you've explained this a ton. Like, if I attack your arm and you underreact to a point where you almost don't react at all and you just let me have it, then I may actually culminate with an arm bar. But more than likely, you're going to overreact it and I want you to overreact so that I can attack something else.

But it's like you said, it's the lack of a balanced response. It's usually an overreaction, usually, that reveals a weakness somewhere else that I can then exploit. As regards the relation of strategy of tactics, while in execution, the borderline is often shadowy. And it is difficult to decide exactly where a strategical movement ends and a tactical movement begins. Yet in conception, the two are distinct. tactics lies in the fills, tactics lies and fills the province of fighting. Strategy not only stops on the frontier, but has for its purpose the reduction of fighting by the slenderest possible proportions.

So the purpose of strategy is to not fight. It goes on with the aim of strategy. This statement may be disputed by those who conceive the destruction of the enemy's armed force as the only sound aim in war, who hold that the only goal of strategy is battle and who are obsessed with the Klaus Vizian saying that blood is the price of victory. Yet if one should concede this point and meet its advocates on their own ground, the statement would remain unshaken. For even if decisive battle be the goal, the aim of strategy must be to bring about this

battle under the most advantageous circumstances. and the more advantageous the circumstances, the less proportionally will be the fighting. This whole goal of strategies we're not fighting. That's what we're doing. The perfection of strategy would be, therefore, to produce a decision without any serious fighting. History, now think about that from a leadership perspective.

I never get in an argument because Dave's doing what I need him to do to make it happen. That's the most effective strategy. It's not how do I outwe. wit Dave in an argument that doesn't matter why am I having an argument history as we have seen provides examples where strategy helped by favorable conditions has virtually produced such a result and he goes through some examples here and again he's he's recalling back to some of the examples that he talks about in the book while these cases while these were cases where the

destruction of the enemy's forces the enemy's armed forces was economically achieved through the disarming by surrender, such destruction may not be essential for a decision and for the fulfillment of the war aim. In the case of a state that is seeking not conquest but maintenance of its security, the aim is fulfilled if the threat be removed, if the enemy is led to abandon his purpose. While such bloodless victories have been exceptional, their rarity enhances rather than detracts from their value. As an indication of latent potentialities

in strategy and grand strategy, despite many centuries of experience of war, we have hardly begun to explore the field of psychological warfare. From deep study of war, Klaus Fitts was led to the conclusion that, quote, all military action is permeated by intelligent forces and their effects.

Nevertheless, end quote, Nevertheless, nations at war have always striven or been driven by their passions to disregard the implications of such a conclusion. Instead of applying intelligence, they have chosen to batter their heads against the nearest wall. So here's Klausowitz. It's like, hey, it's an intelligence. You know, we're doing what. But all the time, we, countries, people, leaders, teams, we do stupid things. We bang our heads against the nearest wall because we get emotional.

We're not intelligent, and we got to look out for that. It rests normally with the government responsible for the grand strategy of award to decide whether strategy should make its contribution by achieving a military decision or otherwise. Just as military means is only one of the means to the end of grand strategy, one of the instruments in the surgeon's case. So battle is only one of the means to the end of strategy. If the conditions are suitable, it usually, it is usually. the quickest in effect, but if conditions are unfavorable, it's a folly to use. So cool, you can go to battle.

But if you haven't prepared for it and you don't have the advantage, it's stupid. Let's assume that a strategist is empowered to seek a military decision. His responsibility is to seek it under the most advantageous circumstances in order to produce the most profitable result. Hence, his true aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by battle is sure to achieve this. So we're not engaging in battles that we don't know we're going to win.

And if we know we're going to win them, why can't we convince the opponent that we're going to win and they bow down? In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy. Its sequel may be either the enemy's dissolution or his easier disruption in battle. Dissolution may involve some partial measure of fighting, but this is not, but this is not the character of battle. So that's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to win the fight without fighting. We're trying to win the argument without having it. I'm trying to get Dave to do what I want him to do without him even knowing that that's what I want him to do. It's his idea. Yeah. And think about that statement about you getting me to do, do what you want me to get done without fighting with me,

and take a step away from this book, which is talking about fighting your enemies, your literal enemies, to someone on your team. My team, my guy. Yeah, because the human nature doesn't change. It doesn't change if we're in the jungle, desert, if we're in 1842,

if we're in 1916, if we're in 1942, it doesn't matter. If you're my enemy or you're my friend, if there's a component of human will, then we need to utilize these principles effectively next section action of strategy how is the strategic dislocation produced in the physical or logistical sphere it is the result of a move which a upsets the enemies dispositions and by compelling a sudden

change of front dislocates the distribution and organization of his forces B separates his forces God I got a little little little little little tingle in my spine when I saw that His supplies D menaces the root or roots by which he could retreat in case of need and Reestablish himself on the base so there's these ways that we can cause strategic dislocation A dislocation may be produced by one of these effects but is more often a consequence of several right? We're gonna we're gonna dislocate them from multiple different directions Differentiation indeed is difficult because a move directed toward the enemy's rear tends to combine these effects Their respective influence, however, varies and has varied throughout history according to the size of armies and complexities of their organization.

With armies which live on the country, drawing their supplies locally by plunder or requisition, the line of communication has negligible importance. So if you've got an army that's out there living off the land, they kind of know what they're doing, you can't really cut their supply lines because they don't have any. even in a higher stage of military development, the smaller a force, the less dependent it is on the lines of communication force applies. The larger an army and more complex its organization, the more prompt and serious in effect is a menace to its line of communication. So depending on who you're fighting, you've got to make some adjustments. Where armies have not been so dependent, strategy has been correspondingly handicapped, and the

tactical issue of battle has played a greater part. Nevertheless, even thus handicapped, able strategists have frequently gained a decisive advantage previous to battle by menacing the enemy's lines of retreat, the equilibrium of his dispositions, or his local supplies. That's what we're doing. So we're throwing people off just by messing with their supply chain, by messing with their communication. And by the way, I'm probably going to mention this 15,000 more times.

He's talking all the time about disrupting your. enemy's communication. Each one of those is the red cell, the red team for us to go, man, am I communicating properly? Every time you hear, that's one of the main ways that the indirect approach works is by disrupting the enemy communication. What does that tell us about our communication? It tells us it's freaking critical.

He goes into some talk. about how to disrupt communication to be effective. Such a menace usually must be applied at a point closer in time and space to the enemy's army than a menace to his communication. And thus early in warfare, it's often difficult to distinguish between strategical and tactical maneuver. In the psychological sphere, dislocation is the result of the impression on the commander's mind of the physical effects which we have listed. The impression is strongly accentuated if his realization of being at a result.

a disadvantage is sudden and if he feels that he is unable to counter an enemy's move psychological dislocation fundamentally springs from his sense of being trapped that's straight out of like the jiu jiu jitsu world yes sir and this is important so we feel we feel dislocated we feel nervous when we get trapped guess what you should never do as a leader hey dave i know you want to do this but what if that happens why am i trapping him Why am I trapping you? Don't trap people that are on your team. That's another little red cell.

Little red team. If I set you up to trap you, you're going to be uncomfortable. You're going to get defensive. You're going to be unstable. And my interest in interacting with you the next time, you know, like, oh, here we go. Let's see what Jocko is going to try to do to me this time. Talk about loyalty and respect and the things that you actually want for me in the end. You know, when you're the leader that, like,

to set your people up so you can hammer them dude that's a classic like I won that argument on that argument man how that work out free in the end like a dip shit in that meeting good job he won't want to step up again this is the reason why it is most frequently followed a physical move on the enemy's rear an army like a man cannot properly defend its back from a blow without turning around to use its arms in a new direction turning temporarily unbalanced is an army as it does a man and with the former the period of instability is inevitably much longer in consequence the brain is much more sensitive to any menace to its back this is

why in jiu jitsu what are we trying to do we're trying to attack the back that's why in the battlefield we're trying to we're trying to come around to the rear because then they have to maneuver and face you and they're exposed in contrast to move directly on an opponent consolidates his balance physical and psychologically and by consolidating It increases his resisting power. When I attack you from the front, you know exactly what's coming at you, and you can resist it more. What does that mean from a leadership perspective? That means that I don't want to have you resist my ideas by coming right at you.

For in the case of an army, it rolls the enemy back towards their reserve supplies and reinforcement. So the original front is driven back and worn thin, new layers are added to the back. So if you make the enemy retreat, well, guess you'll guess. what this is what the Russians did to Napoleon and to the Nazis we're just going to retreat yeah yeah you good job you beat us today cool we just got closer to our supply chain yeah we just got more reinforcements our communication lines got got shorter you made our job easier at the most it imposes a strain rather than producing a shock thus a move around to the enemy's rear against the a move around the

enemy's front against his rear has the aim not only of avoiding resistance on its way but in its issue in the profoundest sense it takes the line of least resistance the equivalent in this psychological sphere is the line of least expectation they are two faces of the same coin this is to widen our understanding of strategy if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also and this line may no longer be the line of least resistance used to when we used to go and Recons, reconnaissance missions.

And we'd put on reconnaissance missions like, I can't Pendleton. And you get up to Camp Pendleton and you're supposed to be observing some area. And there's a one spot to observe from. There's like one bush. You're like, we cannot. It's so tempting to go to that bush. We guess exactly where the, they're going to look. They're going to look at that bush.

So you're better off digging a hole, doing whatever you got to do, taking the worst looking bush. You know, there's four bushes. Three of them are pretty good. One of them sucks. Go to the one that sucks. In studying the physical aspect, we must never lose sight of the psychological. And when both are combined, is the strategy truly an indirect approach calculated, dislocate the opponent's balance.

The mere action of marching indirectly toward the enemy and on the rear of his dispositions does not constitute a strategic indirect approach. So just because you try and come around the rear doesn't mean, because if that's what they think you're going to do, it doesn't matter. Strategic art is not so simple. such an approach may start by being an indirect relation to an enemy's front, but by the very directness of its progress towards the rear may allow the enemy to change his disposition so that it soon becomes a direct approach on a new front. Check. Because of the risk that the enemy

may achieve such a change of front, it is usually necessary for the dislocating move to be preceded by a move or moves, which can best be defined as the term distract in a literal sense to draw sunder. So we have to do multiple moves, just like in jiu-jitsu. You can't just do one move. You can't really even just do two. You've got to do multiple moves to make the enemy not sure what's really important. What's really going on?

I was doing a little bit of research because I always, people will sometimes bring up D-Day. What about D-Day? Frontal assault, right? Yeah, kind of. Guess what? the deception that the allied forces did to make Hitler and the Nazis unaware, I think it was something like, I don't think Hitler committed all of his forces to Normandy for seven weeks

because they were expecting General Patton. That was the whole big scam. Like, hey, we got Patton. He's going to come in this other spot. And so for seven weeks, the Nazis were like, no, don't commit. So even though it was a look like a direct assault, There was a massive fake going on that Germany didn't commit their forces for seven weeks. That's crazy.

So it looked like a frontal assault. I get it. But man, there was some distraction going on. Well, just like he was just saying, it's only a frontal assault if the enemy recognizes this a frontal assault and then lines up his defenses against that frontal assault. And the psychology of that, the human nature reaction is the thing that actually matters the is your response to my interaction. And if you think it's a frontal assault,

they're going to react like it's a frontal assault. And you're going to dig in. And it was like, hey, something's going on here. And like, actually it's a frontal assault. You don't know it. It actually isn't a frontal assault. It's a flank because they are putting their defenses elsewhere. The purpose of this distraction is to deprive the enemy of his freedom of action

and it should operate both the physical and psychological spheres. In the physical, it should cause a distension of his forces or their diverse. to unprofitable ends so that they are too widely distributed and too committed elsewhere this is exactly what D-Day was to have the power of interfering with one's own decisively intended move which was we're gonna hit it in the psychological fear sphere the same effect is sought by playing upon the fears this the fears of and by deceiving the opposing command Stonewall Jackson aptly expressed this in his strategical motto mystify mislead and surprise

For to mystify and mislead constitutes distraction, while surprise is the essential cause of dislocation. It is through the distraction of the commander's mind that the distraction of his forces follows. The loss of his freedom of action is the sequel to the loss of his freedom of conception. A more profound appreciation of how the psychological permeates and dominates the physical sphere has an indirect value, for it warns us of the fallacy and shallowness of attempting to analyze and theorize about strategy in terms of mathematics. To treat it quantitatively as if the issue turned merely on superior concentration of force at a selected place is as faulty as to treat it geometrically as a matter of lines and angles. It's not just numbers. Even more remote from the truth, because in prime,

it usually leads to a dead end is the tendency of textbooks to treat war as mainly a matter of concentrating superior force. In his celebrated definition of economy of force, Fock termed this, the art of pouring out all one's resources at a given moment on one spot of making use there of all troops and to make such a thing possible of making those troops permanently communicate with each other instead of dividing them and attaching to each fraction some fixed and invariable function its second part a result having been attained is the art of again so disposing the troops as to converge upon and act against a single new objective end quote it would have been so so there's the there's the economy of force like hey we're going to put all of our forces in the right spot at the

right time which we all know we learn that all the time and that's that's that's part of of prioritized and execute. That is part of prioritized and execute is, listen, you got multiple things you need to concentrate your forces on an objective efficiently. It would have been more exact. And he's going to take a little hit on this quote from, from Falk, who, by the way, this is Bernardin Ferdin Falk. This is the French Allied commander, World War I. So we kind of already aren't super stoked on him because guess what he did he carried out his strategy hey well got to get more forces as we got to do concentrate all our forces when we blow that whistle we're going to break through this time no here's why it would have been more exact and more lucid to

say that an army should always be so distributed distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration. This is what cover and move is. This is what cover and move is. Is you, and there's a doctrinal term, and I used to tell this to the Young Seals, there's a doctrinal term called supporting distance. And what supporting distance is, you, Dave, and me, your platoon in my platoon,

or your company and my company, or your battalion and my battalion, we aren't going to get so far apart that we can't support each other. So that means if we only have rifles, we're going to be 400, 500 yards from each other, depending on the terrain. If the terrain is mountainous or we might be closer than that because I want to be able to provide support to you. If we have mortars, cool.

Now we can stretch it out a little bit more. If we have artillery, we can stretch it out even more. But we need to be able to cover and move for each other. We need to be able to support each other. And if we get too far apart, you're alone, man. We had a term that we got to coin. It was called fluid mutual support, which is. Wait, when you said we got to coin this, expand, bro.

This is freaking good deal, Dave, over here, making stuff up. Listen, when we at Top Guns figured out, like, we used to have just superior equipment, superior technology, better machines, more of them, they worked better. And we were fighting. And I think I talked about this a while ago. We were fighting in fighting an inferior opponent. To be totally honest with you, our tactics were kind of straightforward. It just wasn't that complicated.

Now, we didn't just like barge right in there and fight them. But, you know, our tactics relied on the fact that in the end, our stuff was better than your stuff and if it's flown correctly. Well, over time, we couldn't rely on that anymore. Their equipment got better than ours. They were able to do things we couldn't do. And what we had to start doing is taking that same equipment and start to utilize them differently. And one of the things we had to get away from was cover move for airplanes used to, to be a thousand feet away, two thousand feet away.

And you stay together. I turn, you turn, I go, you go, and your job as a wingman, and how I graded your performance as a wingman is how well you stayed inside that, what we called visual, visual mutual support. That was like, and if you lost sight of me, believe me, you were gonna hear about in the debrief.

And what we evolved to was, because of inferior equipment, we had to actually get farther away from each other. So in simplest terms, we could figure out who was the person, who was the aircraft in the formation that was fundamentally the most at risk or the most likely to be engaged and the other aircraft could then flank or maneuver or coming from a different three-dimensional direction to support that person. And it was fluid because it changed. It wasn't exactly on the 35 degree bearing line at five miles. It evolved based on weather, based on weapons, based on the formation. just like you described as, and I had to know,

and if I got too far away, I couldn't support you. And if I was too close to you, I couldn't maneuver in a way that allowed me to have an advantageous entry to the problem, a flank because I was too close to you. And while you were talking about that, I was just thinking of the French approach to World War I, this culminating thing versus just the standard combined arms effect. Oh, cool.

I don't need a million tanks. I got a couple tanks here. You don't want to react to the tanks? Cool. They're going to run you over. You want to react to the tanks? Cool. Come out of your holes.

We're going to get you with artillery. You don't want to deal with that artillery you're going to dig in? Cool. I'll roll in with an aircraft. And I don't need an overwhelming force of any of those three, but I need them together in support of one another. And I don't know in the end who's going to get the kill or who's going to be the reason why I am successful.

But you're going to have to react to something. And if you don't, one of those different arms, those different supporting elements will eventually be the thing that causes you to lose. Supporting distance, cover and move. And now. fluid mutual support. Dude, I should have known that I was going to totally submarine your goals of getting through this by talking way too much. I planned for this.

So we'll wrap it up with another paragraph and then we'll do the next on the next podcast. Here's where he's going to break down Fox statement a little bit. He says, because Fox said the art of pouring all one's resources. So Liddell Hart says the concentrate all is an unrealizable ideal and dangerous even as a hyperbole. Moreover, in practice, the minimum necessary may be a far larger portion of the total than maximum possible. It would even be true to say that the larger, the force that is effectively used for distraction of the enemy, the greater the chance of the concentration succeeding in its aim. for otherwise it may strike an object too solid to be shattered. This is like in Jiu-Jitsu, if I try and sweep you,

but I'm not really trying to sweep you, you don't even have to react to it. I have to really try and sweep you. Then if I really try and sweep you, then you expose your neck. Boom, cool. You stick your neck out to, you know, you push into me and boom, there's your neck.

I can get the guillotine. If I don't actually put enough force to get, but if I put too much force into that, well, and you defend it, well, now I've used a bunch of energy and it didn't work. And how often am I going to do that? So we have to be careful. And what he's saying is you want to use,

and it's what we talk a lot about at echelon front, which is minimum force required. How much force do I need to use to get you to react? And if I only have to use 10% of my force over here to get you to react. That means I have 90% of my force to finish your, finish the job on the flank. Closing this out.

Superior weight at the intended decisive point does not suffice unless that point cannot be reinforced in time by the opponent. Yeah, you can put a bunch. I can go for your arm, but if you're going to grab with your other arm and defend it, well, it doesn't matter that I singled out your arm. It rarely suffices unless that point is not merely weaker numerically, but has been weakened morally.

Napoleon suffered some of his worst checks because he neglected this guarantee and the need for distraction has grown with the delaying power of weapons. So there you go. That's a warm up. We're almost two and a half hours deep right now. We're talking.

It's only going to get deeper from here. Let's call it for right now. Let's get into some, I don't know, Echo Charles. Maybe the, any closing statements, Dave? All right. Let's roll into a little, little quick activity with, you know, maybe a little bit of support. Sure.

You know, I know we're trying to be indirect, but maybe there's some direct ways we can kind of help ourselves out. Sure. What do you got? Or some help in our, on our path, which includes being indirect as far as effectiveness goes. concur. Yeah. So, I'll talk with our friend Kerry. and you.

And I just kind of come to realize that this path is not that hard anymore. It's hard, but it's not as hard. You're talking about the path? The path that we're all on. And this is why. I didn't know that. This is why. The path just got easy.

A little bit easier. Okay. More luxurious too. Yeah, easier. It's not easy. Oh, that's hard still. But it's easier in this way. Jock fuel.

Boom. This is why. You drink energy drinks, that's no longer a problem. If you're on the path and you're like into energy drinks, right? You got to get rid of those. And sometimes it'll take willpower. I understand. You know, at the very least an adjustment period, that might not be very comfortable.

Yeah. But it's not like that anymore. You can drink all energy drinks you want anymore. Discipline go. Energy drinks. Good for you. Boom. Path.

Easier. Yeah. Right. Then adjust with that. I have to concur with the path just got easier. Echo Charles with the correct. It's true. Also, we want to have dessert, right?

Yeah. Well, if you're on the path, well, you got to start excluding dessert from time to time. fact pretty much all the time on the path yeah the occasional dessert can happen I mean yeah I my daughter my daughter's birthday yesterday yes sir I understand I was that I was at raglan which is kind of my one of my go to rather might be my favorite restaurant that's your jam for yeah and they have that that cast iron pan with the chocolate it's yeah they call it the illegal yeah it's good they're like it's so good it should be illegal yeah good name so we had to order some illegal.

For my daughter's birthday. That's her birthday. Right. Get that illegal, girl. Right. So when it showed up, the ice cream just melts in the pan. Dude, it's a whole other situation. Yeah, I understand.

Let's face it. To your point, we can't be doing that, you know. Every day. Every day. Exactly. We would love to? Probably not even more than once per month. What if you could, though?

Because you don't do it for the illegal necessarily, most of us. We do it because, hey, that thing tastes good. Yeah. You know, let's face it. After dinner, raglands, I'm assuming you got some steak or something like this. It's not like you're like starving and hungry after the steak. You just want something sweet. Yeah.

That's a sad state of affairs. So you get that. So you get it. You get the illegal. You got your thing sweet. Cool. But you pay a price. Yep. Now on this new path, we don't got to pay the price.

Look at that. Easier. Do it every day if you want. You're talking about milk. I am talking about the muck train. All day, man. All day. So anyway, yes.

And you get additional protein in the form of this. dessert. So boom, right there, path, a little bit easier. You see what I'm saying. Yeah. Good news is also we got some other supporting elements for your joints, joint warfare, super cruel oil. We got stuff before you immunity. Well, you know what you're saying right now is actually a pretty big deal. Like if you think about the, if you think about the fact that someone right now is like, well, they're drinking three energy drinks a day. Yeah. And it's not good for them. And it is going to have long-term negative health effects, legitimate. Well, they're doing it for a reason, right?

They need the benefit of the energy drink, whatever that is. But it's like, it's a problem. It's a problem. And all of a sudden, like that, like with a snap of the fingers, you're, you can actually, you can actually still get the benefits with no downside. No doubt. No problem. Yeah.

Yeah. Same thing with dessert. Same thing. All the benefits, sweetness, goodness. filling. Let's face it, there's a certain texture, too, like that you kind of, you know, you want that mulk. Oh, yeah.

That texture. Oh, yeah. It's true. I'm getting crazy. No, but it's all true. So, you know, does that go against the whole, hey, man, the path is hard, embrace the hardness? A little bit.

Okay. But here's the dichotomy. You turn me on to this. It's a big deal. This is a big deal, too. Oh, geez. I think. I thought B.H.

Liddell Hart had some info for us today, But apparently, Echo Charles are coming in. I'm doing the best they can. Talk to you. To benefit the group. Look, the goal isn't to drink milk. That's not the goal. It's a means to an end.

I'm learning to. So the milk is the protein to help us recover from our workouts. Right. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Right. Getting jacked. So it's more efficient.

Why should we fight that battle when we don't have to? See what I'm saying? Cool. Just take the moat. No battle. No factor. Yeah. Easy money.

Boom. More efficient. Win without a fight. You're not choking down some crap. Yeah. Some chalky. How much do you look forward to mok? Very much so.

I look for, I get super amped. Oh, yeah. And it's the kind, and this is good enough. I had a moke before we trained today, actually. Normally I don't do that, but I had a mope before we trained today. Because I got done with the EF online at like, what, 1230. And we weren't going to train until 2.3. 30 pounds like hmm because normally I don't eat until after the train same but

today again it was calling you you know how certain desserts call your name that's what's happening to yeah I understand I understand fully but guess what no problem calling this path that we're on just got a little bit easier so you don't kind of worry about that anymore so yes like I said immunity we got you got immunity stuff as well cold war vitamin D3 boom take that I'll guarantee your path would be a little bit easier versus if you don't take that now we're not getting sick all of a sudden. Negative.

Which we like. We don't like to worry about that. You can get the drinks at Wawa, by the way, on the East Coast. If you're out on the East Coast, you can go to Wawa, get yourself. You can clear out shelves, whatever. That's kind of like what we're doing. Sanctioned, really. Sanctioned, authorized.

Yeah, authorized. Corrie. My boy, Corey, my cousin, Corey, rolled in with an actual cooler to a Wawa and just started clearing shelves straight up. Like, what? Yeah. That's what we're doing. The workers just looking at him like, is the psycho?

Yeah. You can get a Wawa. You can get this stuff at Vitamin Shop, vitamin Shop has the whole line of the supplements. Yeah. So you can go to vitamin shop or you go to joccofuel.com and get some if you want some. Yep. And if you're interested in a little discount, a little free shipping,

a little not having to worry about remembering to make sure you're always stocked. Mm-hmm. Get the subscription. Path just got a little easier, easier. Even easier. The path just got it even easier. We're not remembering. We're not worried about it.

More efficient. We can focus on something else. No distraction. Technically. B.H. Liddell Hart would be like, oh, you got a distraction going on. Oh, you got a distraction going on. You go right. Let's just eliminate that.

We can focus our efforts. Exactly right. 100%. In a way, it's decentralized command two because Pete guys over there, they're taking over. They're taking over. That's their jam now. And they're covering for you. So you can go move elsewhere.

Exactly. All kinds of goods. You can subscribe is what we're saying. Yes, sir. Get free shipping. Check. Also, origin USA.com. This is where you can get your American-made goods, durable goods, as it were.

But what that means is you can get American-made denim, jeans. A few models there. We've got Delta 68 and the factory. Factory. Yeah. Boom. And you say factory, like they don't like. I was at the UDT Seal Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Yeah. Hell yeah. And, yeah, it's awesome. And they had a guy. They had, what, it's like a statue? I don't know it's not a statue it's a mannequin is there a word for that manikin okay there's a manikin but he's dressed up like a like a nom seal yeah and straight up just wearing jeans just straight up that's what he's in the case you know the glass case right right like uh like a

like an action figure yeah a big one big one like a life size yeah yeah you can get so we made those delta 68's because i know look i'm probably gonna be living multiple lives you know i'll be back here as a fight another war and when I come back it's probably going to be back in mom again could be possibly I don't know if the jungle I'm going to wear jeans and I'm gonna wear Delta 68 jeans and I just want the world to know that it makes sense and like I said they all are made in America from the even the raw materials the dirt to the shirt dirt to the shirt or the jeans as the case may be also there's belts on there some cool wallets on there hoodies athletic wear anyway there's a lot of stuff on there you get what

All Made in America. All Made in America, origin, USA.com. Also, good news. We have our own store. We've been had our own store since day one, which is, again, good news just in case you didn't know. Was it day one? Day eight, I think. Okay.

Maybe. I don't know. One of the early days, we'll say that. It's called jaco store. So you go to jocco store.com. And this is where you can get your shirts, hats, hoodies, rash guards, this kind of stuff. Discipline equals freedom. Represent while we're on the path.

So boom, not only did the path get a little bit easier, got a little bit cooler, it's my opinion, junkstore.com. Oh, also we have a subscription situation as well. It's called the shirt locker. This is all the shirts that you may or may not see me, sometimes Dave Burke now, Carrie, wearing, where you're like, oh, I didn't see that shirt on the store. And you're like, oh, where do I get that one? Where do I get that one?

I know I'm saying this because people are literally saying that to me or whatever. you go to the shirt locker and you and you subscribe that's where you get those shirts so yeah the designs are more um how should i say it a little bit off off the straight and narrow and more creative that's best way i can say it right now unless it's called the shirt lockers so subscribe for that one if you want okay yeah and by the way you can scrub to this podcast you can also check out jockel unraveling which i'm doing with darrell cooper we're going hard in the paint with that one we got the grounded podcast we got the warrior kid podcast which i know i owe you you also got the jockel unraveling which i owe you also got the jocel Doco Underground, the Underground Podcast. We're doing amplifying information. We're doing a lot of Q&A on that one because we have a little direct methodology. You can ask questions, so we're doing a lot of Q&A.

Bro. You've been giving some good advice on that one. And I'm speaking from my position personally, that one about the 13-year-old kids, right? The teacher's trying to control the class. And, like, sometimes they're kind of, they get kind of crazy sometimes, but it's like, man, they kind of get crazy.

Like, what do I do? How do I deal with that? Man, that was a good one. That was really good. And a lot of that is, yeah, it's just good questions coming in. So, hey, if you want to get to, if you want to listen to that, we set this up because we needed to have some kind of an alternative platform in case, in case, in case what? Well, contingencies happen.

What if, what if some of these platforms decide to start charging you money? What if some of these platforms decide to start interjecting their own advertisements into them. What if they just straight up censor us because they don't like what we're talking about? Any of these things could happen. If those things happen, we wanted to have our own backup plan.

So we have one. jocco wonderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month to support the cause. And if you can't afford it, no factor. This isn't like, oh, we don't want you in the game.

We want you in the game. If you can't afford it, email assistance at joccawonderground.com and we'll take care. We also have a YouTube channel that you can also subscribe to if you want to see my assistant director skills, which are in action. Inaction on that.

Origin USA also has a YouTube channel. If you want to see Maine Ties skills. Doing some good work up there. Main Tye. I was talking today about some stuff. I won't go into it. Main Tye. Make a shout out all day.

Also, psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is, it's an album, Jocco album, with tracks. Jocco tracks telling you, us, how to get past and through our moments of weakness. Make them be less of a factor on this path. Boom, got a little bit easier. Again, now you got Jocko there. Supplements that taste good.

No factor. And boom, you can just keep rolling on that path a little bit easy, a little bit more luxurious. You can also get Flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Myers Company, he's putting stuff to hang on your wall, stuff that's cool. American Made. Check it out. We got a bunch of books. Final spin.

Got a novel coming about novel stuff. Have you read the final? Dave? I don't know. I mean, I've read, I think you might have made a couple of small edits since then. What's your assessment? You know what my assessment is. The better assessment was my wife's assessment.

I was going to say, what about your wife's assessment? That was the real assessment. Yeah. Because she has no, uh, what's zero skin and, or not skin. skin in the game. No loyalty. Dogging. Yeah. No loyalty. Nothing. In fact, she's sick of hearing about me. She's probably looking to drop the hammer. What was her assessment? Well, the best assessment was

she finished it in two sittings. Wow. And that's like going to bed, I'm going to crack the book open. I'm like, hey, just, hey, read this, tell me what you think kind of scenario. Not like a big pressure move. And she kind of got through two thirds of it. And then the next time it finished. And she's like, that was really good. Like that, the, the, the, the, the, the, finished a book in a day and two readings like two sittings speaks volumes to that. That's a good deal. It's good.

So that's coming out actually the date change on when it comes out. It's coming out now. No, it's coming out a little bit earlier. Oh, do. Yeah. Seems like the demand is kind of kicking. Looks like we're moving that. I think it's November 6th now.

Oh, no. So if you want that, you know the deal. If you want that first edition. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, the Code, the Evaluation, the Protocol, Discipline whose Freedom Field Manual way the warrior kid one two three and four About Face we talked about it today Mikey and the Dragons Mikey and the dragons It's incredible how often I have to talk about Mikey on the Mikey and the dragons

You can explain that story to adults Yeah, because people like I'm afraid to do this I'm afraid to do that. It's like all it's common question and even from leaders like I'm afraid to address this It's like all the time about We talked about it today and then extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. We have a leadership consultant consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. If you want to check that, I'll go to eschelonfront.com.

We have online training as well. It's like a leadership gym. Right? With trainers. Yeah, with trainers. What do you just think you're going to just stay in shape by sitting at home? No, you've got to go to the gym. How's your leadership going to get better?

How's your leadership just going to even stay at a good level? Got to go to the leadership gym. That's what we've got. EFonline.com. Yeah, eFonline.com extreme ownership academy. So if you want to learn about leadership, go there. We got courses on there. We're doing live stuff all the time.

We're doing live stuff all the time. You want to ask me a question? Go there. I'll answer your question and I'll actually dig down and Dave will come in off the top ropes. Lafe will be flanking the whole situation. Like we're there. And we have the muster.

We just got done with Orlando. Next muster is Phoenix in August, August 17th and 18th. Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Go to Extreme Ownership.com. Everything we've done is sold out. So if you want to come, go and register. We also have EF Battlefield. We also hate.

If Battlefield, we don't have one on the calendar right now. The next thing we do have on the calendar is FTX, where you're going to put on gear, laser tag gear. We have this high-speed laser. system and you're going to run operations and learn these leadership lessons. The next one we're doing is in San Diego, Daigo, right here in SD, July 12th and 13th. So if you want to come, there's only 32 seats for that. We haven't really talked about it yet. So we kind of, we kind of turned it on when they started filling up.

We filled up another one. So here we go. July 12th and 13th, FTX in San Diego. You're going to run operations. You're going to put these principles to use. give it, check it out. And then if you want to help service members, you want to help service members active and retired,

their families, gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization doing all kinds of great work for veterans. One of the main thing she's doing is getting medical treatments for our vets that maybe aren't being covered by the VA. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. and if you want more of my protracted pontifications

where you need more of Echo's misplaced meanderings or perhaps even more of Dave's animated editions you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter on the Graham and on Facebook Echo is at Equitrales Dave is at David R. Burke and I am at Jocco Willink and to the military service men and women out there

thank you for putting the strategy of freedom into tactics and keeping the world from darkness. Same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thanks for keeping the world safe from evil here at home. And everyone else out there, the direct approach is not as direct as you think. So think again. And maybe, maybe just try taking the long way around because the long way around you might find out ends up being the shortest distance between two points.

Until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko. Out.